Nature's cruelty, keeps a few captive birds in cages, and is accustomed to say of them, "These, at any rate, are safe, rescued from subjection to ruthless conditions, sheltered from the inclement weather and from enemies, and all their small wants abundantly satisfied;" who once or twice every day looks at his little captives, presents them with a lump of sugar, whistles and chuckles to provoke them to sing, then goes about his business, flattering himself that he is a lover of birds, a being of a sweet and kindly nature. It is all a delusion--a distortion and inversion of the truth--so absurd that it would be laughable were it not so sad, and the cause of so much unconscious cruelty. The truth is, that if birds be capable of misery, it is only in the unnatural conditions of a caged life that they experience it; and that if they are capable of happiness in a cage, such happiness or contentment is but a poor, pale emotion compared with the wild exuberant gladness they have in freedom, where all their instincts have full play, and where the perils that surround them do but brighten their many splendid faculties. The little bird twitters and sings in its cage, and among ourselves the blind man and the cripple whistle and sing, too, feeling at times a lower kind of contentment and cheerfulness. The chaffinch in East London, with its eyeballs seared by red-hot needles, sings, too, in its prison, when it has grown accustomed to its darkened existence, and is in health, and the agreeable sensations that accompany health prompt it at intervals to melody, but no person, not even the dullest ruffian among the baser sort of bird-fanciers would maintain for a moment that the happiness of the little sightless captive, whether vocal or silent, is at all comparable in degree to that of the chaffinch singing in April "on the orchard bough," vividly seeing the wide sunlit world, blue above and green below, possessing the will and the power, when its lyric ends, to transport itself swiftly through the crystal fields of air to other trees and other woods. I take it that in the lower animals misery can result from two causes only--restraint and disease; consequently, that animals in a state of nature are not miserable. They are not hindered nor held back. Whether the animal is migrating, or burying himself in his hibernating nest or den; or flying from some rapacious enemy, which he may, or may not, be able to escape; or feeding, or sleeping, or fighting, or courting, or incubating, however many days or weeks this process may last--in all things he is obeying the impulse that is strongest in him at the time--he is doing what he wants to do--the one thing that makes him happy.