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SUPPLEMENT TO BIRD NOTES AND NEWS. 



glad to buy them ; a bird is cheery in a house." 

 Yet another reason lay in the mawkish sentiment 

 expressed by superficial observers who talked of 

 the humanising and softening influence exerted by 

 captive birds in the slums. In the course of 

 thousands of visits to the slums, the writer had 

 seen many a captive bird — miserable prisoners in 

 foul little cages, hung near the ceiling to be " out 

 of reach of the cat," with slimy water and dirty 

 seed, its possessors as a rule oblivious of its 

 presence, utterly careless of its comfort : a thing of 

 ess value than a broken chair or a cracked dish. 

 Persons in less humble circumstances often kept 

 wild birds because they were " so fond of them " ; 

 and to these was recommended a visit to a bird- 

 dealer's shop now and then, that they might see 

 what their fondness cost its victims. Two such 

 visits were described. In one dismal shop the 

 listless, sickly condition of the birds was ascribed 

 to the dullness of the day, and the visitor invited 

 to return when the gas was lit. Asked if close 

 time affected the trade much, the dealer replied, 

 " Close time ! birds are wild in spring, and in 

 summer are busy with their young, but we are all 

 right as long as autumn and winter are left us." 

 In the second case, birds of many species, home 

 and foreign, were crowded up amid dirt and stench, 

 in company with rabbits, pigeons, guinea-pigs, and 

 fancy mice ; almost all looked sickly, some dying. 

 Comment on the somewhat high prices met with 

 the rejoinder, "You must consider how many of the 

 birds die, we must make up for the loss." " No 

 wonder they die in such an atmosphere." " We 

 can't keep them in a drawing-room, and the door is 

 open." The birds also frequently suffer, in places 

 littered with seed, and where cats cannot be kept, 

 from inroads of mice, which sometimes nibble their 

 feet off or gnaw through their wings. The remedy 

 for this hideous misery and mockery of existence 

 for the wild birds lies in legislation ; in an Act of 

 Parliament to make the keeping of caged birds 

 illegal, to put an end to the traffic, to check this 

 spoliation of a valuable national asset — a heritage 

 of beauty and song in a land often cold and grey— 

 and to leave the birds the liberty that is theirs by 

 divine right, " that they may fly above the earth in 

 the open firmament of heaven." Meanwhile, let 

 each member of the Society do something for 

 birds ; rouse public opinion, write to local news- 

 papers, with facts and details as to the work of 

 bird-catchers in the district ; drop a sentence or two 

 in conversation, speak in the school and the Sunday- 

 school. It is so easy not to see, not to care ; but 

 a visit to a bird-dealer's shop in some obscure 



street would surely stimulate anew to exertion 

 beyond a mere conventional expression of pity. 



The catching and caging of wild birds, and the 

 question of bird-shops, brought also strong protests 

 and appeals from Mrs. Fuller Maitland, Mrs. C. Q. 

 Roberts, Mr. L. Downing Fullerton, Mr. James 

 Mott, and Mrs. J. O. Herdman. Mr. Stebbing 

 described the method of catchers near London in 

 catching birds as they came to drink at a stream, 

 and exhibited the net they had employed and of 

 which he had dispossessed them. (Mr. Stebbing 

 presented the net to the Society.) — Mr. Herdman 

 hoped that in any petition to Her Majesty allusion 

 would be made to this subject. When a bird was 

 killed its miseries were ended ; but when it was 

 caught they were only begun. 



Mrs. E. Phillips desired the meeting to consider 

 the propriety of appointing an inspector in plain 

 clothes to pay surprise visits to special places and 

 report as to the illegal capture, caging, and destruc- 

 tion of British birds, with a view to prosecutions ; 

 and Mr. Ash asked if a fund could not be opened 

 to pay for inspectors. 



The Chairman said that the condition ox bird- 

 shops and how far they could be reached by the 

 law was already under the consideration of the 

 Council. Inspectors were a matter, of ways and 

 means. If the Society had an annual income of 

 thousands instead of hundreds many things might 

 be undertaken. 



Mrs. Fisher Unwin described the wholesale 

 manner in which birds are caught on migration in 

 the Tyrol and Italy. No sentiment could appeal 

 to the people, who were very poor and used the 

 birds for food with their polenta j and the cruelties 

 practised on every hand were very great. Possibly 

 a leaflet couched in the simplest language might be 

 of some use. 



The Chairman explained that the Society had 

 already been in communication with Mr. Hawksley, 

 of the Rome and Naples S.P.C.A., who, when in 

 England, had attended a meeting of Council by- 

 special arrangement that the subject might be 

 thoroughly discussed. 



Education. 



Mr. F. B. Kirkman, in opening the discussion on 

 teaching in schools, said the question was how to 

 protect birds from boys. What they had to do was 

 to check two instincts of the boy's nature, the 

 instinct to destroy and the instinct to collect. The 

 ordinary boy's collection of eggs was of necessity 

 wholly useless from a scientific point of view, and 

 the student of oology must go to the great national 



