51- OBJECTIONS ANSWERED, 



if their death be useful and lawful, he has recourse to cir- 

 cuitous modes of killing them, where direct ones would 

 answer equally well. This is cruelty, and this with you 

 I abominate ; but not the infliction of death when a just 

 occasion calls for it. 



They who see no cruelty in the sports of the field, as 

 they are called, can never, of course, consistently allege 

 such a charge against the entomologist ; the tortures of 

 wounded birds, of fish that swallow the hook and break 

 the line, or of the hunted hare, being, beyond compari- 

 son, greater than those of insects destroyed in the usual 

 mode. With respect to utility, the sportsman, who, 

 though he adds indeed to the general stock of food, makes 

 amusement his primary object, must surely yield the 

 palm to the Entomologist, who adds to the general stock 

 of mental food, often supplies hints for useful improve- 

 ments in the arts and sciences, and the objects of whose 

 pursuit, unlike those of the former, are preserved and 

 may be applied to use for many years. 



But in the view even of those few who think inhuma- 

 nity chargeable upon the sportsman, it will be easy to 

 place considerations which may rescue the entomologist 

 from such reproof. It is well known that, in proportion 

 as we descend in the scale of being, the sensibility of 

 the objects that constitute it diminishes. The tortoise 

 walks about after losing its head; and the Polypus, so 

 far from being injured by the application of the knife, 

 thereby acquires an extension of existence. Insensibility 

 almost equally great may be found in the insect world. 

 This, indeed, might be inferred a priori, since Provi- 

 dence seems to have been more prodigal of insect life 

 than of that of any other order of creatures, animalcula 



