Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 4 (1846).djvu/394

1560 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 would 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, during 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 devoted to its peculiar sphere, and therefore each, so to speak, tending to split up and divide the general sensative mass (which, in the vertebrate animals, is amalgamated with and conveyed to the one common nucleus) ; it is easy to understand why a fractured