OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



43 



tlie death of its objects, and that this is not to be effected 

 without putting them to some pain, must be allowed ; but 

 that this substantiates the charge of cruelty, I altogether 

 deny. Cruelty is an unnecessary infliction of suflering, 

 when a person is fond of torturing or destroying God's 

 creatures from mere wantonness, with no useful end in view ; 

 or when, if their death be useful and lawful, he has recourse 

 to circuitous 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 compa- 

 rison, 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 amuse- 

 ment 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 improvements 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 inhumanity 

 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 de- 

 scend 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 exten- 

 sion of existence. Insensibility almost equally great may be 

 found in the insect world. This, indeed, might be inferred 

 a priori ; since Providence seems to have been more prodigal 

 of insect life than of that of any other order of creatures, 

 animalcula perhaps alone excepted. No part of the creation 

 is exposed to the attack of so many enemies, or subject to so 



