1556 Insects. 



or there has been another caught in the Wye, as I have been informed that one was 

 taken about ten days or a fortnight after the one caught in the Usk. — James Bladon ; 

 Pont-y-pool. 



Observations on Insect Sensibility. By T. Vernon Wollaston, 

 Esq., B.A., F.C.P.S. 



A paper has lately appeared in the i Zoologist' (Zool. 1524) by the 

 Rev. Mr. Turner, in which he accuses me of attacking his observa- 

 tions in an article which I formerly wrote on the question, " Do in- 

 sects feel, or do they not ? " Now I beg to assure Mr. Turner in 

 particular, and the readers of the ' Zoologist ' in general, that his accu- 

 sations are perfectly groundless, inasmuch as I was not even aware 

 that he had written anything whatever on the subject; the "facts" 

 referred to being in reality those single and isolated ones so con- 

 stantly objected to us by casual observers, who expect from them 

 alone (unmodified by circumstances) to crush the whole theory of in- 

 sect sensibility, and leap, in one wide presumptuous bound, to the 

 sweeping conclusion, that the entire insect world is destitute of feel- 

 ing ! That something of the sort had been printed in the ' Zoologist,' 

 I was not altogether ignorant (it having been mentioned to me by a 

 friend with whom I was staying last spring) ; but by whom it was 

 written, at what time it appeared, and what was the e.iact subject of 

 the communication, were points totally unknown to me ; having never 

 even seen the observations, nor having heard anything more about 

 them than the casual mention of them to which I have just referred. 

 As my intention in the article he attacks, was simply • to discuss the 

 question in a broad light, and to endeavour to prove from analogy 

 that insects do possess feeling (in contradistinction to men who 

 broadly assert that they do not), it was not the drift of my argument 

 to upset the observations either of Mr. Turner, or any other naturalist, 

 respecting the " struggles of impaled Lepidoptera," but merely to 

 argue from the analogy of their nervous system to our own, that the 

 third grand department of the animal creation could not be destitute 

 of feeling ; and, in so doing, to show that the contrary was not demon- 

 strated by the fact that insects could be impaled when in a state of 

 repose, without displaying an immediate sense of pain. Mr. Turner 

 has certainly fallen into very great error, in supposing that I under- 

 value the smallest particle of his observations. 1 think them both in- 



