CANARIES AND CAGES. 
173 
CANARIES AND CAGES. 
iOME years ago, I think in the year 1863, there was 
a talking canary to be seen and heard at a little 
lonely turnpike cottage on the Lansdown Road, Bath. 
Visitors crowded to the spot in order to be present 
at the performance, which was covered by much such a pro- 
gramme as that which is described on p. 159 ; indeed had it not 
been for the lapse of time, I should have guessed that the same 
small actor had been again before the public, as I am almost 
sure his name was Joe, or Joey. “Pretty Dicky,” “ How- 
de-do?” “What’s o’clock?” &c., were the whole repertoire, 
with some kindred phrases. 
The canary is, I believe, a bird gifted with unusual powers 
of imitation, as indeed are the majority of songsters, most of 
which will adapt their song to the sounds with which they are 
surrounded. I distinctly recollect that, in my childish days, 
a canary which was kept, I think, by the cook — or at any rate 
in the kitchen — was in the habit of suspending its whole musical 
gamut for the sake of reproducing the notes of an old squeaky 
pump in the scullery, which refused to work without a rythmic 
cadence ; and I once knew a starling (unhappily, caged) whose 
vocabulary consisted of one word — that which he often heard his 
master, a farmer, say on coming home wearied out at night. 
“ Tir-ed — tiredy Ti-ved" was his sympathetic lisping echo; con- 
taining, perhaps, an allusion to his own state of mind with 
regard to his hopeless prison wires. Since coming to years 
of discretion I have had no further opportunity of gauging the 
talking powers of birds, having an overwhelming objection to 
caged birds of any kind on conscientious grounds. 
In England, fashions and customs filter downwards; Lazarus 
copies that which he sees Dives do ; and the example set by 
keeping birds in cages is a bad one, were it only for the fact 
that it encourages the spread of the thing. The mere buying of 
cages which it necessitates tends to keep afloat a trade which 
props itself upon that of the cruel bird-catcher ; and the mer- 
chants who sell what are called “bird requisites” make it a 
system to offer prizes for caged birds at exhibitions and wild- 
bird shows which they get up for the purpose. The dealers do 
not hesitate to tell the ignorant that all birds sold by them are 
“ born in cages.” This excuse ought not to be in existence. 
For every well-cared-for canary a hundred suffer untold miseries. 
Only a few days ago I rescued one from a Bristol slum. Its 
tiny feet and legs were swollen, distorted, and inflamed — en- 
crusted with filth and a mass of disease. Its whole body was 
devoured by vermin. The hind claws had twisted themselves 
up among the front ones, owing to overgrowth of the toe-nails ; 
so that the poor little creature had nothing to stand on but 
a small pad, which Nature, coming to the rescue, had formed for 
it at the base of the leg. 
