1560 Insects. 



to do so, numberless are the facts which might be adduced on this in- 

 teresting point. I do not assert that the mesmeric state is analagous 

 either to hybernation or sleep ; but, be that as it may, it at least tends 

 to prove, that creatures possessing an extreme sense of pain, may ex- 

 ist at times perfectly unconscious of external circumstances, and inca- 

 pable of feeling what on ordinary occasions they would feel acutely. 



The fact, too, of insects living with pins actually in them, and per- 

 forming with apparent unconcern their usual avocations, can cause 

 but little surprise to any one who, like Mr. Turner and myself, can 

 admit the first and greatest mystery, that they may be impaled at all, 

 under certain circumstances, without experiencing any immediate 

 sense of pain. For even in the human subject we have cases almost 

 parallel, therefore why should it be a matter of astonishment in such 

 animals as these ? I myself knew a lady who had the misfortune, in 

 days of yore, to swallow a pin. At first, the wound it produced 

 caused her most excruciating pain, so much so as to give rise to very 

 alarming symptoms. In an extremely short time, however, the 

 wound had healed and the pain ceased, and, although the pin stuck 

 in its original position, she was able to eat and swallow as usual, and 

 no effect remained but an occasional unpleasant sensation. The pe- 

 riod I allude to, is more than eighteen years ago, and still the 

 pin sticks where it was, but without causing the smallest degree of 

 pain. 



But, leaving this slight deviation from the exact direction in which 

 our history woidd lead us ; let us proceed in tracing the " natural pro- 

 gress" of our impaled moth, and take up the subject at the point 

 where we left it. 



So long as the insect was not aroused at first, we can easily con- 

 ceive, from what has just been said, its quiescent ignorance to 

 continue until its proper time for awaking ; but, duriug that interval, 

 let us not think that nothing has been going on. Nature will not 

 stop her course to please our fancies and indulge our theories. She 

 proceeds, — and although the animal, for the causes previously alluded 

 to, may not perhaps awake, the process of healing is going on. In 

 animals more than half-way down the zoological department, whose 

 nervous systems have no common centre to which external intelli- 

 gence can be especially directed ; but which possess a series of cen- 

 tres, each probably demoted to its peculiar sphere, and therefore each, 

 so to speak, tending to split up and divide the general sensalive mass 

 (which, in the vertebrate animals, is amalgamated with and conveyed 

 to the one common nucleus) ; it is easy to understand why a fractured 



