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 v/hich 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 



