44 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



many disasters ; so that the few individuals of each kind 

 which enrich the valued musuem of the entomologist, many 

 of which are dearer to him than gold or gems, are snatched 

 from the ravenous maw of some bird or fish or rapacious 

 insect — would have been driven by the winds into the 

 waters and drowned, or trodden underfoot by man or beast ; 

 for it is not easy, in some parts of the year, to set foot to 

 the ground without crushing these minute animals ; and thus 

 also, instead of being buried in oblivion, they have a kind of 

 immortality conferred upon them. Can it be believed that 

 the beneficent Creator, whose tender mercies are over all his 

 works, would expose these helpless beings to such innumerable 

 enemies and injuries, were they endueed with the same sense 

 of pain and irritability of nerve with the higher orders of 

 animals ? 



But this inference is reduced to certainty, when we attend 

 to the facts which insects every day present to us, proving 

 that the very converse of our great poet's conclusion, as 

 usually interpreted, 



The poor beetle that we tread upon 

 In corporeal sufferance finds a pang as great 

 As when a giant dies, 



must be regarded as nearer the truth. ^ Not to mention the 

 peculiar organization of insects, which strongly favours the 

 idea I am inculcating, but which will be considered more 

 properly in another place, their sang-froid upon the loss of 

 their limbs, even those that we account most necessary to 

 life, irrefragably proves that the pain they suffer cannot be 

 very acute. Had a giant lost an arm or a leg, or were a 

 sword or spear run through his body, he would feel no great 

 inclination for running about, dancing, or eating ; yet a 

 crane-fly ( Tipula) will leave half its legs in the hands of an 

 unlucky boy who has endeavoured to catch it, and will fly 

 here and there with as much agility and unconcern as if 

 nothing had happened to it; and an insect impaled upon a 

 pin will often devour its prey with as much avidity as when 



1 Shakspere's intention, however, in this passage, was evidently not, as is 

 often supposed, to excite compassion for the insect, but to prove that 



The sense of Death is most in apprehension, 

 the actual pang being trifling. — Measure for Measure, Act iii. Scene 1. 



