SELBORNIANA. 
241 
the momentary consequences of their actions, and to note their effect on the 
great family of which they are members. Any kind-hearted person who could see 
the miserable little canaries which I am obliged to pass as they drag out their 
wretched lives in dingy windows of dirty streets, undergoing, by the dozen, every 
sort of neglect and distress, would hesitate before defending the keeping of them 
as a universal custom. And it is in this way that the thoughtful — those who 
wish to do good in their generation — are learning to look at things. There is 
actually a superstition among the ignorant that the smaller the cage you keep a 
bird in the better, “ because it is more snug ! ” and they act accordingly. The 
bird shows of which your correspondent speaks seldom draw the line at canaries. 
An exhibition of the kind to which she alludes has just taken place in London, at 
which the piteous spectacle of a caged swallow was to be seen, besides caged 
nightingales, and a redstart— birds of passage to whom the mere fact of curbing 
the passionate desire to migrate is a martyrdom in itself, so earnest and over- 
powering is it. These and their like are the cruelties to which keeping up bird- 
caging as a national habit tends, and I would earnestly recommend this view to 
those who are concerned, and rightly, at the terrible diminution of bird life at 
home and abroad. 
Edith Carrington. 
Are Women Entirely to Blame ?— I have been much grieved to see 
that the destruction of birds for the adornment (?) of millinery still goes on, and 
also that wings are to be the fashion this winter. It seems to me that laying all 
the blame on women for wearing feathers does not go to the root of the matter. 
What is to be said for the men, who for the sake of profit make a trade of 
slaughtering birds ? It is they who make money out of it, not women. I know 
many women who would not think of wearing feathers that had been obtained by 
cruel means, but they are told over and over again in the shops that the wings are 
made up from feathers of birds killed for food, and also that the aigrettes now sold 
are made of vegetable fibre, and that they would be throwing numbers of workers 
out of work if they left off buying feathers. What are they to believe ? I think it is 
time to give up the sneers about women being less civilised than men. Their sphere 
has until recent years been so limited that they have been kept in ignorance of 
many trade arrangements, but now that they are taking a more active share in the 
W'ork of the world outside of the home, they are often “ sickened ” to find out 
how shamefully and cruelly many things are managed. 
M. T. 
The Great Orme’s Head. — Mr. Tracy Turnerelli has published a charac- 
teristic letter on “ the too probable total effacement” of this mountain, from which 
we extract the following: — “A project to run an electric railroad over the moun- 
tain, from bottom to top, from side to side, is now being publicly discussed for 
the mere profit of greedy speculators and the further attraction of riotous howling 
trippers, who have already half ruined Llandudno itself. This railroad once 
established, as a natural inevitable consequence, hotels, houses, taverns and drink- 
ing booths I ad infinitum ! will cover the Grand Old Orme, and then — Ichabod 1 
to it in toto. Can nothing be done to prevent this barbarous sacrilege ? I am 
entreated from a hundred quarters to make the endeavour, and although at eighty 
years of age I had hoped to retire from public life, I yield to this collective entreaty.” 
“ The Field Club.” — On and after January next The Field Cub will cease 
to exist as an independent magazine, arrangements having been made for its 
incorporation in Nature Notes. 
An interesting lecture on Gilbert White, entitled “Glimpses of a Popular 
Naturalist,” was given before the Eastbourne Natural History Society on 
November 17, by Mr. Thomas Bradfield. 
We learn without much regret of the death of the Natiire Lover, the first and 
only issue of which was noticed at p. 214. 
