200 BIRDS IN LONDON 



creatures. Deprive the cock-fighter of his sport 

 — the law has not quite succeeded in taking it 

 away yet — and the bird ceases to attract him ; 

 its brilliant courage, the beauty of its shape, its 

 scarlet comb, shining red hackles and green 

 sickle plumes, and its clarion voice that proclaims 

 in the dark silent hours that another day has 

 dawned, all go for nothing. 



It is unhappily necessary to say even more 

 in derogation of the East-end chaffinch fancier, 

 who strikes one as nothing worse than a very 

 quiet inoffensive person, down on his luck, as 

 he goes yoftly about among the shrubberies 

 with the little tied-up cage under his arm. He 

 is not always looking out for a wild chaffinch 

 solely for the purpose of affording his pet a little 

 practice in the art of singing ; he not unfre- 

 quently carries a dummy chaffinch and a little 

 bird-lime concealed about his person, and is 

 quick and cunning at setting up his wooden 

 bird and limed twigs when a wild bird appears 

 and the park constable is out of sight. 



In some of the parks, where the wild birds 

 are cared for, the men who are found skulking 

 about the shrubberies with cages in their hands 

 are very sharply ordered out. It is not so 



