55 



cravings of hunger and thirst with monotonous seed 

 and dirty water whicli has absorbed all that it can of 

 the foul gases at the top of the room ! Stay ! there is 

 just one other thing to do, and the bird does it. He 

 sings from morning till night, but only to kill time 

 and to satisfy his instinctive desire to call to and 

 please a possible— but alas! improbable — mate. At 

 last, racked with a nightly headache caused by 

 mephitic vapours, and oppressed with a constant 

 malaeration of his lungs, he suddenly dies of pre- 

 viously unsuspected disease, singing to the end. His 

 owner, with tears in his eyes, will tell you he '*sung 

 hisself to death, he was that wonderful good ! " ; the 

 amateur bird - doctor, giving his valuable opinion 

 i7t absentia and knowing nothing about the case 

 except that the bird has had some packet mixture to 

 eat, will tell you, with conviction in his voice, that he 

 died — of inga seed. Another bird is bought, the inga 

 seed is discontinued, and in due course the cage 

 is again empty — through poisoning with foul and 

 mephitic air. This lamentable picture of uninten- 

 tional cruelty is by no means overdrawn. It is true 

 that there are many people who keep their birds 

 under the influence of a better environment, but it is 

 nevertheless a fact that the state of affairs which I 

 have here described is even in these days far too 

 common. 



It is just the same with horses. Under the con- 

 ditions to which they are frequently subjected they 

 suffer more or less like our cage-birds. For the most 

 part they live in stables affording far too little cubic 

 space for their bulk, with every crevice carefully 

 stopped up by a groom whose chief characteristic is 

 ignorance of the most obstinate type, and conse- 

 quently in an atmosphere highly charged with the 

 exhaled products of respiration and the irritating 

 fumes of ammonia carbonate. Then at intervals they 



