The caging of wild song-birds is another practice which deserves the strongest reprobation. It is often pleaded that the amusement given by these unfortunate prisoners to the still more unfortunate human prisoners of the sick-room, or the smoky city, is a justification of their sacrifice; but surely such excuses rest only on habit--habitual inability or unwillingness to look facts in the face. Few invalids, I fancy, would be greatly cheered by the captive life that hangs at their window, if they had fully considered how blighted and sterilized a life it must be. The bird-catcher’s trade and the bird-catcher’s shop are alike full of horrors, and they are horrors which are due entirely to a silly fashion and a habit of callous thoughtlessness, not on the part of the ruffianly bird-catcher (ruffianly enough, too often) who has to bear the burden of the odium attaching to these cruelties, but of the respectable customers who buy captured larks and linnets without the smallest scruple or consideration. Finally, let me point out that if we desire to cultivate a closer intimacy with the wild animals, it must be an intimacy based on a genuine love for them as living beings and fellow-creatures, not on the superior power or cunning by which we can drag them from their native haunts, warp the whole purpose of their lives, and degrade them to the level of pets, or curiosities, or captives. The sanctuaries which the parks of some large towns now afford to birds, squirrels, etc., suggest what our relations with wild animals _might_ be, under more humane conditions. Of all uses to which animals can be put--and this applies to the domesticated as well as to the wild--the silliest, perhaps, is that of training them to “perform.” The true interest of animal life lies in its naturalness; and to see a dog, or horse, or lion performing a “trick” is a sight which ought to cause disgust rather than pleasure in any rational mind, especially as the process of training in most, if not in all cases, involves the practice of cruelty. Humane persons should discountenance every sort of entertainment in which animals are introduced, from the dancing bear in the village to the more elaborate but not less idiotic performances on the stage. Many of them are cruel; all of them are stupid; most of them are both. CHAPTER IV. THE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS FOR FOOD.