[ 2 ] 
small prisons only a few inches in their measurements. Between 
these two extremes is to be found every degree of questionable 
treatment, and we cannot wonder that while some people, looking 
only at one end of the scale, think the objectors to bird-caging are 
needlessly fidgety and sensitive, others, regarding the other end, 
feel their lives saddened by the thought of the countless little 
victims of man’s selfishness. 
Looking at the matter broadly, it must be admitted that the 
practice, as a whole, is the cause of a vast amount of physical 
suffering and of that misery which results from the outrage of 
natural instincts and impulses. The whole structure of the bird 
proclaims him a creature meant for freedom. His life among the 
trees, his power of flight, his restless activity, his love of his 
fellows and his young, his physical structure, with his large lungs, 
his hollow bones, showing that his whole frame needs to be bathed 
in oxygen to maintain him in life and health—these all rebel 
against the confined life behind the bars of the cage. The frantic 
efforts made by the victim to regain his lost freedom are surely the 
strongest proof of the outrage on his nature. While he beats 
the wires till his wings are torn and bleeding, and stuns himself 
against the roof of the cage in his efforts to fly upwards; while he 
is frequently condemned to hang for hours against a wall and 
endure the sun’s bright glare untempered by any leafy shade, or 
the biting east wind with no sort of shelter, it seems idle to ask 
more evidence that the cage is a cruel prison to him. 
There are, indeed, few species which can survive the ordeal of 
captivity for long; but daily experience of this fact does not 
prevent all kinds being caught and sold for what can be got for 
them from inexperienced or juvenile customers. Birds which feed 
on the smallest insects are deliberately caught and caged, though 
the “ fancier ” knows quite well that it is impossible to provide 
them with the food which they require, and that they must 
inevitably die a miserable death from slow starvation. The Secretary 
of the Avicultural Society, writing* recently of the wren, the 
* Avicultural Magazine , January, 1899. 
