JANUARY 11 



regards the practice of depriving birds of the power of 

 flight by maiming them of a pinion. Upon no class of 

 birds is this barbarity more commonly inflicted than 

 what are called ornamental water- fowl. The com- 

 manders of some of the German prison-camps were 

 brutal and cruel enough, God knoweth, to the poor 

 fellows whom the fortune of war placed in their power ; 

 but I have not heard that any of them cut off a foot of 

 a prisoner to prevent him escaping. When I walk 

 through St. James's Park to Westminster I avoid the 

 path that runs past the prison-yard of the pelicans, so 

 profound is my commiseration for these grotesque, 

 archaic noblemen, condemned to shiver through life- 

 long detention under murky London skies, dreaming 

 wistfully of their youth on the sun-baked shores of Nile. 

 If any one were to ask me why birds should have been 

 provided with an organ of flight of such extraordinary 

 complexity as a wing composed of feathers, instead of 

 the relatively simple arrangement of a membrane 

 stretched upon the digits of a bat or the exceedingly 

 effective meshed wing of a dragon-fly, I should be at no 

 loss for an answer, even if I thought fit to envelop it 

 in the fine periphrasis which I once heard spoken by a 

 witness before a Select Committee of the House of 

 Commons. A question was addressed to him to which 

 any common mortal might have replied ' I don't know ' ; 

 but this witness, being a Civil Servant, thought it incum- 

 bent upon him to use phraseology appropriate to the 

 dignity of his department. ' The honourable member,' 

 said he, ' is interrogating me upon a subject, cognisance 

 of which on my part is a matter of impossibility.' 



