12 



Now, a widower, he eats and sleeps well, but is anxious 

 and uneas}' about the renewed failure of his project. 

 Of actual acute pain I believe small birds feel little. 

 The}' will allow their lesions to be touched, anointed, 

 and bathed, in a placid way that would be impossible to 

 a creature feeling, as, for example, a dog would. And 

 the dog would patiently bear in silence what would 

 wring cries from any human being, no matter how 

 stoical. The doctors say it is a matter of anticipation. 



The restless misery of a Goldfinch in one of 

 those horribly-invented bell-shaped wire cages that are 

 painted in gaudy colours and sold to poor people by 

 oilshops, always seems to me to be the extreme of 

 what a bird can suffer. In these cages, and in others 

 not quite so evil in shape or material, but still perfect!}- 

 unsuitable, there is no to and fro hop, so essential, 

 apparently, to any bird's caged content. Monotony, 

 which would be the crazing torment to us, does not 

 seem to distress birds, witness the way in which the 

 Canary, after a fly, returns to the prison which, if it 

 were an Archbishop, or even a plain mortal, it would 

 about as willing!}^ revisit as would that unfortunate 

 historical gentleman of the Church who was once 

 hung up for seven 3'ears — or was it fourteen? — in a 

 bell-shaped cage in the well-like area of a certain 

 French Castle. 



The dietary is what, I think, makes most for a 

 bird's happiness or woe. Thrushes and Blackbirds 

 fed on hemp and bread. Nonpareils and Indigo-birds 

 forced to subsist on seed : seeing their own beauty and 

 bright colours fade day by day, and, at last, knowing 

 themselves bald with the anaemic baldness that follows 

 a moult on a seed diet— this is, indeed, misery! To 

 eat is practically the only active pleasure our prisoned 

 birds have, bar the bath and sunshine : and I believe 

 all the faculty of keen enjoyment they have is mainly 

 concentrated in the sense of taste and comfortable 



