140 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



whistle and sing, too, feeling at times a lower 

 kind of contentment and cheerfulness. The chaf- 

 finch in East London, with its eyeballs seared by 

 red-hot needles, sings, too, in its prison, when it 

 has grown accustomed to its darkened existence, 

 and is in health, and the agreeable sensations that 

 accompany health prompt it at intervals to 

 melody, but no person, not even the dullest ruf- 

 fian among the baser sort of bird-fanciers would 

 maintain for a moment that the happiness of the 

 little sightless captive, whether vocal or silent, is 

 at all comparable in degree to that of the chaffinch 

 singing in April "on the orchard bough," vividly 

 seeing the wide sunlit world, blue above and green 

 below, possessing the will and the power, when 

 its lyric ends, to transport itself swiftly through 

 the crystal fields of air to other trees and other 

 woods. 



I take it that in the lower animals misery can 

 result from two causes only restraint and 

 disease; consequently, that animals in a state of 

 nature are not miserable. They are not hindered 

 nor held back. Whether the animal is migrating, 

 or burying himself in his hibernating nest or den; 

 or flying from some rapacious enemy, which he 



