136 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



living, appeal so strongly to the aesthetic feelings 

 in us and is not so universal a favourite. 



This, too, will doubtless come in time. Speak- 

 ing for myself, and going back to the former sub- 

 ject, little as I like to see men feeding on larks, 

 rather would I see larks killed and eaten than 

 thrust into cages. For in captivity they do not 

 "sweeten" my life, as the Maidenhead guide- 

 book writer would say, with their shrill, piercing 

 cries for liberty, but they "sing me mad." Just 

 as in some minds this bird's music — a sound which 

 above all others typifies the exuberant life and 

 joy of nature to the soul — cannot be separated 

 from the cooked and dished-up melodist, so that 

 they turn with horror from such meat, so I cannot 

 separate this bird, nor any bird, from the bird's 

 wild life of liberty, and the marvellous faculty of 

 flight which is the bird's attribute. To see so wild 

 and aerial a creature in a cage jars my whole 

 system, and is a sight hateful and unnatural, an 

 outrage on our universal mother. 



This feeling about birds in captivity, which I 

 have attempted to describe, and which, I repeat, 

 is not sentimentality, as that word is ordinarily 

 understood, has been so vividly rendered in an 



