4 
A LINNET FOR SIXPENCE. 
commons, heaths, and uncultivated grounds, which is most 
harried and tortured by us; for we are all, in a sense, 
responsible for what the bird-catchers and bird-dealers are 
permitted to do. It is captured in tens and in hundreds of 
thousands all over the country, and despatched in all haste 
to London and the great provincial towns. It must indeed 
be sent up quickly, since not less than sixty per cent, of 
the birds are known to perish in captivity within a week of 
being taken. The dealer, on this account, is anxious to 
dispose of them as soon as possible ; it often pays him 
better to sell them all out at once for sixpence each, or even 
less, than to keep them a week on the chance of getting 
two shillings or half-a-crown apiece for the survivors. It 
is a shocking waste of life ; yet the birds that perish during 
the first few days of captivity represent but a part, probably 
less than half, of the entire waste. As a rule the bird- 
catchers send up only the cock birds, since linnets cannot 
be made to breed in captivity, and the females do not sing 
and are consequently of no value. What then becomes of 
these ? Alas ! their merciless captor does not release them, 
as fishermen put back the undersized fish they take into 
the sea. He kills them ; he pulls their heads off as he 
takes them from the nets and throws the little fluttering 
bodies aside as so much carrion. But in some cases, bird- 
catchers have told me, the little headless bodies are taken 
home to be eaten in linnet pies. 
I thought of these things—of the linnet free and the 
