CAGED BIRDS.
WE are told, but all warnings do not turn out true, that we may expect a "shortage " soon in the supply of perhaps the most popular of all our cage-birds,—the grey parrot which comes from the West Coast of Africa. It is curious, and at first sight very paradoxical, but the reason why we are likely to be short of parrots is that the time of the voyage from the West Coast to Liverpool or Bristol has been so greatly shortened. The cause does not seem, in the absence of explanation, to fit the effect, but the actual explanation is simple : it is that the parrots, coming from a much warmer climate than ours, arrived, in the old days, by slow and gradual stages into the colder atmosphere ; they had far more time to become acolimatised. Now, with the swift passage of modern steamers, they are plunged from the hot into the cold with all the swift shock of a Turkish bath. The result is in a very large majority of cases fatal. From the beginning this parrot importation has been rather deadly work, so many of the birds have died. It recalls the horrors of the "middle passage" in the old days of the slave-trade to America and the West Indies. But the proportion of birds which survive, to those which die, is very much less now than it used to be. The passage becomes the more cruel as it becomes shorter. The question, therefore, must force itself on the serious consideration of all who are influenced by humane feelings in regard to the lower animals whether we are doing our duty towards them in permitting this importation, with its wholesale mortality, to go on unchecked ; and incidentally it raises also the whole subject of the ethics of keeping birds in cages.
The bird in its cage has always been a favourite emblem with the poets for the prisoner in durance vile, and for the heart which is not permitted to beat beside the heart to which it is attracted. The parallel is just a little too obvious : it is a little more obvious than exact. Of course, the implication is that the bird is in sore distress behind its cage bars ; that it is metaphorically panting behind, even if not physically flutter- ing against, them,—" beating its heart out against the bars of its cage" is the most favoured phrase for expressing its con- dition. The phrase is a moving one, but it hardly seems to express accurately the condition of the very large majority of the caged birds which we see contentedly chipping their seed, munching their groundsel, chirping and hopping about in apparent happiness. Naturally, if a bird be caught wild, as the horrible bird-catchers round about London catch their birds, and be put into a cage, it then does, truly enough, present the dreadful spectacle which the words of the poets suggest to our minds. The poets have not the words at command to express one half of the distress and misery which the frenzied movements of the poor scared bird, its pantings, its dashings of itself against the sides of its prison, exhi bi t so plainly to any one who has a heart at all. There is hardly a sight more sad. But just because it is so sad a sight, because a bird in this state, terrified almost to death and miserable when not in active terror, cannot possibly be a joy to any who possess it, we see it very seldom. Few people care to keep a bird which is in such discord with its circumstances, and it is a subject of common wonder that the bird-catchers can find any market for their evilly acquired wares. The case of birds which have been brought up in cages and in the close companionship of man from the very nest is an absolutely different one. Thew birds are not unhappy ; at least, if they are, it is a misery which they contrive to conceal very thoroughly. They eat and drink and twitter, as we have said, with every possible appear- ance of content. It is futile to pretend that a bird which will
take a hempseed off your tongue or off your finger, and will
peck with furious rage at the latter if you put it into the cage without a hempseed, has any fear of man. It is obviously,
impudently, and even absurdly fearless. It will attack this being, who is to itself in the proportional size of, say, Westminster Abbey to an average-sized man, as if it thought a duel between them could be contested on perfectly even terms. The trochilus seeking the leeches in the open jaws of the crocodile does not place itself in more deadly peril than the bird which comes from its cage to sit on your finger and allows itself to be stroked. It is entirely without knowledge of fear of man. Nor does it appear that the bird suffers at all from its confinement. If it did, it would take the first oppor- tunity of release from its cage to be up and away for ever. But the bird which is allowed out of its cage in this way, to fly about the room, becomes seriously and unmistakably unhappy if the cage is not there for it to go back to when it wishes to return. It has a real home-like affection for its cage, which is not at all surprising when we consider that it is here that the
bird finds the principal needs of its life, food and drink, abundantly and readily satisfied. It is not romantic to speak
thus of its chief needs, but it is a true way of speaking. The great mistake which we are apt to make in considering the condition of caged birds, as in considering the condition and the feelings of the lower animals generally, is to read our own thoughts and feelings into their minds and sensitive processes.
A man in a prison, we argue, is not happy ; he desires his liberty to walk about at large, and the lack of liberty is a distress to him, even though he have the best to eat and drink, and the prison be perfectly salubrious. Therefore we are very apt to think the bird in the cage must be unhappy like- wise, and probably, as we suppose, will feel the loss of its liberty so much the more that it has so much more free and extensive power of natural movement, by grace of the gift of wings, than the man who crawls with his two legs over the earth. But there is very little evidence to show that a bird in its natural state flies for the sake of flying : indeed, all the evidence is to the contrary. We need not go into all the details for the moment, but it is so forcible that we are almost compelled to accept the conclusion that a bird in a cage, provided it has been in a cage all its life, is actually in a more happy state than the same kind of bird at liberty, with all the necessity of hunting for its living, and with the constant fear upon it of its very numerous foes. If the cage in which the bird be kept is large enough for two, male and female of its kind, to be kept together, and their nesting operations to be performed in comfort, then it is difficult to see what ground they have to grumble with their destiny. They are not, despite their wings, like man, restless creature, to whom a prison always means misery, even though it might contain all that his soul and body should need.
Evidently, then, it is not the actually caged birds which demand our pity and our sympathetic consideration nearly so much as some of the birds which are in process of being brought into the cages. The bird-catcher's ways ought to be, and rightly are, condemned. It is a very open question in the writer's mind whether the importation of the grey parrot does not require the check of humane legislation; it is at least a subject which certainly requires a little looking into. But the bird which has been brought up in a cage from the nest is not, because caged, necessarily unhappy. That is a fallacy which ought to be dispelled. It is a fallacy also to assume that the canary, because it is born, as well as bred, in a cage, is there- fore any more happy there than one of our native wild birds which has been only reared, but not bred and born, in the cage. It is true that the canary cannot live at large in our country; but that is not to say that it is not at large in its own country, that very country whence the grey parrots come from. The description which we sometimes hear of it as "naturally a cage-bird" is, of course, pure nonsense. No bird, we must presume, was intended by Nature for life in a cage. But there are very many kinds which are, without doubt, perfectly happy in cages, if only they are rightly treated when there, and have been brought up in the cage, and brought to the cage in the right and merciful way. The fear is that certain kinds are not brought there in a way which is creditable to our humanity or in accordance with our duty towards the lower crea t ion.
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