FEBRUARY 47 



is kinder to give him his fourth popular name of night- 

 jar. Of all the birds of the heath and brake, none is 

 more absolutely innocuous, none more fascinating than 

 this one, yet hundreds are slain every year because 

 foolish persons believe they hurt game or suck the 

 milk of cattle ! 



So great has been the increase of certain small birds 

 in cultivated districts, that it is sometimes necessary to 

 apply a check in place of the natural one that has 

 been removed. But, for pity's sake, let it be applied in 

 the form of sudden death, and not imprisonment. The 

 bird-catcher's trade is full of untold horrors, not less 

 repulsive than those of the plume trade. Captivity is 

 bitter to every living creature ; it must be doubly bitter 

 when it involves the deprivation of a faculty distin- 

 guishing birds from all other warm-blooded animals 

 except bats a faculty, too, which has been the type of 

 freedom in all ages, and which man has applied all his 

 ingenuity to acquire, without success. 



It is, of course, true that those who cultivate a craze 

 for caged birds are not intentionally cruel. They 

 lavish every kind of attention, wise and unwise, on 

 their pets. It is true, too, that abundant warmth and 

 food, combined with little exercise, soon tend hi some 

 species to dull the prisoner's craving for liberty, and 

 may even cast a torpor over the seasonal impulse to 

 migrate. But even if it were a pleasant thought that 

 a cage-bird's life is only rendered endurable by the 

 effect of overfeeding on its natural faculties, a vast 

 amount of suffering and of lingering death is brought 



