The Evolutionist at Large by Grant Allen — Read

Hoeing among the flower-beds on my lawn this morning -- for I am a bit of a gardener in my way -- I have had the ill-luck to maim a poor yellow slug, who had hidden himself among the encroaching grass on the edge of my little parterre of sky-blue lobelias. This unavoidable wounding and hacking of worms and insects, despite all one's care, is no small drawback to the pleasures of gardening _in propria persona_. Vivisection for genuine scientific purposes in responsible hands, one can understand and tolerate, even though lacking the heart for it oneself; but the useless and causeless vivisection which cannot be prevented in every ordinary piece of farm-work seems a gratuitous blot upon the face of beneficent nature. My only consolation lies in the half-formed belief that feeling among these lower creatures is indefinite, and that pain appears to affect them far less acutely than it affects warm-blooded animals.

Their nerves are so rudely distributed in loose knots all over the body, instead of being closely bound together into a single central system as with ourselves, that they can scarcely possess a consciousness of pain at all analogous to our own. A wasp whose head has been severed from its body and stuck upon a pin, will still greedily suck up honey with its throatless mouth; while an Italian mantis, similarly treated, will calmly continue to hunt and dart at midges with its decapitated trunk and limbs, quite forgetful of the fact that it has got no mandibles left to eat them with. These peculiarities lead one to hope that insects may feel pain less than we fear.