[ 4 ] 
was recently reported in the Daily Graphic (January 17th, 1899) 
as follows :— 
“ Revelations as to the destruction of British song-birds were made at the 
Lambeth County Court yesterday during the hearing of a judgment summons 
brought by Charles Grimwood, a bird dealer in Lee, against Alfred Wilson, a 
bird shopkeeper in Rye Lane, Peckham. The defendant pleaded inability to 
pay a debt of £2, the price of ten dozen linnets supplied. Most of the birds, he 
stated, had died. Judge Emden : Do they usually die ? The defendant: Yes, 
the close confinement kills them. Judge Emden : Then why do you buy the 
poor little things ? Defendant: I have to put something in the window. The 
plaintiff stated that Wilson was well able to pay. He sold the birds at four 
times the amount he paid for them. The defendant generally bought 100 
dozen a week of linnets, skylarks, and other British song-birds.” 
“Doubtless,” says Mr. Hudson again, “the day will come 
when, law or no law, the bird-catcher will find it necessary to go 
warily, lest the people of any place where he may be tempted to 
spread his nets should have formed the custom of treating those 
of his calling somewhat roughly. That it will come soon is 
earnestly to be wished.” And he adds, “ If any one is to be hated 
or blamed, it is the person who sends the bird-catcher into the 
fields—not the dealer, but he who buys trapped birds and keeps 
them in cages to be amused by their twitterings.” 
The case of foreign birds is almost worse, for they must undergo 
the horrors of transit as well as the change to an unnatural 
climate. The following is taken from an article called “ Hints on 
Keeping Small Foreign Birds,” in a paper* which advocates 
the practice, and which consequently would not naturally be likely 
to draw attention to the cruelties without good cause. The writer 
thus describes a “live-stock” emporium in London:— 
“ Parrots, ferrets, kittens and monkeys were kept here in unpleasing confu¬ 
sion on the ground floor, while upstairs, in filthy dark hutches ranged close 
against the wall, were—oh, the pity of it!—hundreds of tiny Senegal, Avadavat 
and orange-cheeked Waxbills. The sick, the well, the dead, the dying, all 
crowded together where never a glint of sunshine could fall—never a breath of 
pure fresh air blow on them. They who have lived in the lands of perpetual 
sunshine, among the fruits and flowers as lovely and delicate as themselves, now 
* Exchange and Mart , October 20th, 1897. 
