BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 131 



that the spirit had indeed gone. In such cases the 

 subject has invariably been heahhy, although it 

 is hard to believe that in the conditions we exist in 

 any man can have the perfect health that all wild 

 creatures enjoy. 



X 



After my long talk with the bird-catcher on 24th 

 June, and two more talks equally long on the two 

 following days, I found that something of the charm 

 the common had had for me was gone. It was not 

 quite the same as formerly ; even the sunshine had 

 a something of conscious sadness in it which was like 

 a shadow. Those merry little brown twitterers that 

 frequently shot across the sky, looking small as 

 insects in the wide blue expanse, and ever and anon 

 dropped swiftly down like showers of aerolites, to 

 lose themselves in the grass and herbage, or perch 

 singing on the topmost dead twigs of a bush, now 

 existed in constant imminent danger — ^not of that 

 quick merciful destruction which Nature has for 

 her weaklings, and for all that fail to reach her high 

 standard ; but of a worse fate, the prison life which 

 is not Nature's ordinance, but one of the cunning 

 larger Ape's abhorred inventions. Instead of taking 



