A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 
53 
A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 
WAS much interested to find from Nature Notes for 
last November, that the Prefecture of Police in Paris 
had enforced by stringent measures the law for the 
Protection of Wild Birds useful to agriculturists. I 
did not know that such a law existed in France, and I should 
feel very grateful for any information on the subject. 
Since I stayed in Paris last winter, I have often thought of 
the many bird-fanciers’ establishments which then attracted my 
attention, and which struck me as being unusually numerous. 
As 1 read this notice I wondered if the law, which has set free 
so many little captives in the Bois de Vincennes, prohibited at 
the same time the wanton destruction of robins, finches, wrens, 
and other small birds for the daily markets. Unless this be so, 
these birds must, in a short time, surely become extinct. But 
although we English people may look with horror at this daily 
massacre of little songsters abroad, and flatter ourselves with the 
thought that our fields will always echo with the song of lark 
and linnet, we have only to take a walk in the neighbourhood of 
Seven Dials, and we shall see almost as many bird-fanciers’ 
shops as in Paris. Alay we not, therefore, follow the example 
that has been so ably set in France, and try and get a law 
passed which will set at liberty those birds as useful to our 
agriculturists as to those in France. This is surely a question 
which the Selborne Society might take up, and, as someone has 
already remarked, “ now is the time to set about it.” 
I must own at the same time, however, that I am a great 
lover of birds, and all my life have loved to keep several pets 
confined in cages, and I cannot say, what a pleasure this has 
been to me ; but there have been occasions when I have looked 
in a bird-fancier’s wndow, and seen there the many little lives 
wearing themselves out in the tiniest of cages, or rather hoxts, 
that I have felt how willingly would I give up my own pet birds 
were such a law passed as would free these little captives in the 
streets. 
One may argue that these caged birds give unlimited pleasure 
to hundreds of people who are unable to hear the song of lark or 
blackbird in their natural state, and I admit there is much to be 
said on their side. At the same time, it is possible for anyone 
living in London to walk through some of the many gardens and 
parks, and listen to the songs of the birds who there enjoy their 
liberty and who are yearly increasing in numbers. In any case, 
when it actually came to the point, a true lover of birds would 
hardly let the pleasure of keeping a few caged birds stand in the 
way of the liberty of the many thousands that we see imprisoned 
in those terrible little boxes in a bird-fancier’s window. 
I fear, however, that this plea for caged birds would not in 
itself be of sufficient merit to allow the Selborne Society to urge 
