270 OUR NATIVE SONGSTERS. 



birds. Various writers who have witnessed these 

 public performances have recorded the different 

 deeds of severity by means of which the gold- 

 finches were awed into docility and skill by their 

 teachers. We can but rejoice that in oui' country 

 at least we are not often, in the present day, 

 invited to behold accomplishments of this kind, 

 for it is sad to think that the creatures wliich 

 God made to minister to the finer sensibilities of 

 our nature, should be turned, by cruel man, into 

 victims of agony, to give an hour's amusement 

 to the thoughtless. 



It is pleasing to turn from instances in which 

 tlie natural intelligence of the goldfinch has been 

 thus directed, to one exhibited by this bird in its 

 untaught condition. " It was very early in the 

 spring of 1837," says a writer in the Magazine of 

 Natural History, " that a bird had been lost from 

 a cage, which was still hanging up, with the door 

 open, in the passage entrance to the back court of 

 a gentleman's house in Exmouth, when a gold- 

 finch was one morning found feeding in it, and 

 the door was closed upon it ; but on inspection, as 

 it appeared to be a female, it was very shortly 

 after restored to liberty. In the space, how- 



