Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 4 (1846).djvu/392

1558 six summers, and always with the same result. Place a bottle of Co- leoptera (even in a sleeping state) in warm water, and, singularly enough, in a moment, according to the spirit of Mr. Turner's theory, they are seized with a sudden desire "to escape"! They rush fu- riously backwards and forwards,—they writhe, apparently in the greatest agony, and in less than a minute they are all dead. It is cu- rious that they should wish so suddenly "to escape,"—for, as Mr. Guyon philosophically adds, the expansion of the glass gives them positively rather more room to walk about in than before ; so that their sphere for action would be larger ! Hence, we are driven (be it even against our will) to infer that the great commotion which has just taken place, was truly the result of some mighty sensations (call it what we please) and not from a sudden desire to escape. Place any number of insects, of whatever order you choose to select, on a cold plate, and let them remain there, uncovered, until they are quiescent. Let the plate be so situated that you can apply some warming agent beneath it without disturbing its position. Begin the experiment, and you will experience the most exquisite piece of fun imaginable. Halticæ immediately hop twice as far as they ever did before, — Ela- teridæ bound and crack like parched peas in a frying-pan, — Brachely- tra scamper frantically over the edges of the plate, — Harpalidæ rush off as quick as their legs can carry them,, — and all orders and deno- minations "make themselves scarce " as rapidly as possible; and yet, if Mr. Turner's theory be correct, this is not the result of pain ! I al- low that these are not parallel cases with the pinning of Lepidoptera, but, in the question under consideration, they are as directly to the point. They are strong proofs that insects of all denominations, not only " possess feeling," but also a sense of pain, though this truth be elicited from them under different circumstances. Indeed, the very instances brought forward by Mr. Turner himself, seem to me to tell a similar tale, in a manner perfectly natural and in proportion to the causes he applies. For mark now what would be the natural progress of an insect in an impaled state ; and then let us compare it with Mr. Turner's own example and see in what points they differ. But, be- fore doing so, let us not forget that the greatest advocates of insect sensibility, do not give them any extreme sense of pain. In avoiding the rocks of "Scylla," they are too wise to fall into the opposite "Charybdis." They do not assert that insects possess as much sensi- bility as we do ourselves, nor even half as much ; they merely contend that they do possess it, and that too, in proportion to their position in the Animal Kingdom. Hence, what would be the natural effect when