74 SluiDia. the Rest Song-bird. 



distinction is gained mainly l)y reason of its song being poured 

 out in the stillness of the night when all other bird music is 

 hushed, and they claim that if the Skylark and Blackcap pos- 

 sessed this habit they too would be similarly praised. To these 

 people I would say, go and listen to the Persian Nightingale. 

 This bird sings a great deal more than our Western bird bv 

 day and possesses a much more powerful song if slightly less 

 sweet voice; but the song is almost identical. To hear this 

 bird's beatitiful notes ringing clear and resonant above all the 

 other sounds of wild life impresses one to such an extent that 

 he is not likely to listen to, and much less to be influenced by 

 the claims made for other bird music with which he is familiar. 

 A far more simple test is to keep a Nightingale, Skylark and 

 Blackcap and judge from the exhibition in one's own bird-room ; 

 here again the Nightingale's excellence is very evident, even 

 though no captive Western Nightingale ever sings in captivity 

 as he does in freedom. He is a bird of the wild and not of 

 the cage. 



It is hard for me to appreciate when, considering" the 

 number of people who keep captive birds, the large sums which 

 pass yearly through the bird dealers' hands, the enormous vari- 

 ety of birds imported from ah parts of the earth, and of the 

 time and trouble expended by their keepers, why it is that this 

 greatest possession of our pets — a gift possessed only by birds 

 and humans — is so little considered. The working-man fancier 

 with his caged Thrush, Skylark or Linnet is the true bird-lover, 

 for he keeps a bird, as did the people of the East centuries before 

 these Western countries were inhabited, for the pleasure it gives 

 him of listening to its song, and not for its grotesqueness and 

 garish plumage. We see in the canary the trend of this habit. 

 This bird was originally bred for song and kei)t for song onlv, 

 even though some people may perhaps have been attracted by its 

 colour, and even this colour did not satisfy, as wntness the pro- 

 duction of the colour-fed birds — a pernicious fancy and deterrent 

 to health. Vanished is the little " London Fancy canary, i 

 bird who could sing, and in his place we have unshapely bodies 

 for show purposes, or machine-rendered songs mechanical and 

 monotonous. Even to-day we have a group of people talking 

 of a canary with nightingale's notes, woodlark's notes, and 

 blackcap's notes, yet these same people miglu just as well seek 



