210 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



dressing a congregation of captive eagles, all 

 mentally ruffling their plumage and flapping their 

 pinions, and uttering indignant screams of pro- 

 test against the injustice of their lot. 



The illustration pleased me for a different rea- 

 son, namely, because, being a student of bird-life, 

 his contrasted picture of the two widely different 

 kinds, when deprived of liberty, struck me as being 

 singularly true to nature, and certainly it could 

 not have been more forcibly and picturesquely put. 

 For it is unquestionably the fact that the misery 

 we inflict by tyrannously using the power we 

 possess over God's creatures, is great in propor- 

 tion to the violence of the changes of condition 

 to which we subject our prisoners; and while 

 canary and eagle are both more or less aerial in 

 their mode of life, and possessed of boundless 

 energy, the divorce from nature is immeasurably 

 greater in one case than in the other. The small 

 bird, in relation to its free natural life, is less 

 confined in its cage than the large one. Its 

 smallness, perching structure, and restless habits, 

 fit it for continual activity, and its flitting, active 

 life within the bars bears some resemblance ex- 

 cept in the great matter of flight, to its life in a 



