[TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR:] SIR,—With reference to the
discussion now going on in your columns as to the automatism of animals and their possession of sensation, the fact should not be forgotten that, in the year 1837, Dr. David Badham, then Radcliffe Travelling Fellow of ther University of Oxford, published (in Paris) a pamphlet entitled "The Question concerning the Sensibility, Intelligence, and. Instinctive Actions of Insects," which he subsequently enlarged into a little book, published in London in 1845, under the title of "Insect Life ;" and that in both these publications the following- positions were sustained :—
1. Sensation is inconceivable as existing apart from intelligence and spontaneous movement.
2. The actions of insects, and the organisation of their nervous system, indicate that they do not possess intelligence.
3. Therefore, as sensation cannot exist without intelligence,. insects have no sensation.
To myself, Dr. Badham's reasoning seems altogether unsatis- factory; but not the lees did he uphold, nearly forty years ago, a doctrine respecting instinctive actions which seems to me essentially the same as that of Mr. Spalding.—I am, Sir, &c.,
WILLIAm B CARPENTER.
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