pain as the more perfect.

Now with respect to fish, they are very inferior in the scale of
creation, being, with the exception of the cetaceous tribe, which class
with the Mammalia, all cold-blooded animals, and much less perfect than
reptiles or many insects. The nervous system is the real seat of all
pain; and the more perfect the animal, the more complicated is that
system: with cold-blooded animals, the nervous organisation is next to
nothing. Most fish, if they disengage themselves from the hook, will
take the bait again; and if they do not, it is not on account of the
pain, but because their instinct tells them there is danger. Moreover,
it is very true, as Sir H. Davy observes, that fish are not killed by
the hook, but by the hooks closing their mouths and producing
suffocation. How, indeed, would it otherwise be possible to land a
salmon of thirty pounds weight, in all its strength and vigour, with a
piece of gut not thicker than three or four hairs?

Upon the same grounds that I argue that fish feel very little
comparative pain, so do I that the worm, which is so low in the scale of
creation, does not suffer as supposed. Its writhings and twistings on
the hook are efforts to escape natural to the form of the animal, and
can be considered as little or nothing more. At the same time I
acknowledge and, indeed, prove, by my own arguments, that it is very
cruel to _bob for whale_.

To suppose there are no gradations of feeling as well as of perfection
in the animal kingdom, would not only be arguing against all analogy,
but against the justice and mercy of the Almighty, who does not allow a
sparrow to fall to the earth without his knowledge. He gave all living
things for our use and our sustenance; he gave us intellect to enable us
to capture them: to suppose, therefore, at the same time, that he
endowed them with so fine a nervous organisation as to make them undergo
severe tortures previous to death, is supposing what is contrary to that
goodness and mercy which, as shown towards us, we are ready to
acknowledge and adore.

I cannot finish this subject without making a remark upon creation and
its perfectibility. All _respectable_ animals, from man down to a
certain point in the scale, have their lice or parasites to feed upon
them. Some wit, to exemplify this preying upon one another, wrote the
following:--

"Great fleas have little fleas,
And less fleas to bite them,
These fleas have lesse