CAGE ATO SINGING BIEDS. 
SECTION I.— INTRODUCTORY 
MODES OF CAPTURli:. 
A HIGH althoiig'li somewhat antiquated autliority in culinary 
matters has said, that you must catch a hare before you can 
skin it : and the universal recognition of this axiom induces us 
to believe that we shall not be considered out of order^ if we pro* 
ceed first to consider how to catch birds, for caught they must 
certainly be, before they are kept. Let it not for a moment be 
supposed that, while conveying these instructions, we are ad- 
vocating the indiscriminate capture of the feathered songsters. 
By no means ! In order to stand right with our readers, we 
would at once and emphatically observe, that we consider it 
cruel and unjustifiable to resort to any contrivance for taking- 
them, unless some better end than mere amusement is to be 
ansv/ered. The man who goes out with nets, and snares, and 
bird-lime, to plot against the liberty of the free wild creatures, 
to whom motion and singing is a delight unspeakable, and 
does this for the sake of pastime, is upon a par with him 
who sallies forth with a gun on his arm to pop at any and 
every thing, and call it " sport " : they are arcades avibo, 
and fully entitled to Byron's definition of the term. 
The most primitive and inartistic mode of bird-catching is 
that which is famiaar to our school-boy days : four bricks 
and a piece of stick is all the apparatus necessary to form a 
B 
