As the years sped by, this much-indulged bird craved petting and attention to an abnormal degree, could be coaxed at any hour into singing, and formed the strange habit of trilling a low, sweet carol at ten o'clock every night, which his mistress called his "good-night song." When he had been caged for twelve or thirteen years he became as playful as a kitten, and was particularly fond of going through what his mistress called the "jungle tiger act," which consisted of crouching down out of sight in the grasses of his sod, and then springing suddenly forward to bite in a gentle way a finger poked between the wires of his cage. He never wearied of this game so long as he could induce a child or grown person to engage in it with him, and before he died, a year or so later, he developed a degree of playfulness that almost amounted to imbecility.
[As stated in our last issue, Mrs. Miller's paper on 'The Ethics of Caging Birds,' in Bird-Lore for June, brought us numerous letters, from which we have selected two, representing both sides of the question, for publication. As a further contribution to this discussion we publish in this number of Bird-Lore several papers describing experiences with caged birds.--Ed.]
_Dear Sir_:--I have always been such an admirer of Mrs. Miller's writings that I confess to a feeling of great disappointment in her article concerning caged birds, which appeared in your June number of Bird-Lore. Will you allow me to comment on it briefly?
Mrs. Miller starts out with the position that while she disapproves with "all her heart" of caging wild birds, yet since "birds are caged we must deal with circumstances as we find them."
Undoubtedly Mrs. Miller is right in sounding a note of warning for those who keep birds as pets, by impressing upon them the care that should be given these utterly helpless little creatures. She says, "Not one bird in a thousand is properly cared for," and she might add to that the fact that thousands die every year of hunger, thirst, lack of care,--forlorn prisoners, utterly unable to help themselves. These facts being true, the inconsistency of her position is that she gives the slightest encouragement to the bird traffic which results in so much cruel suffering. She says that the discomfort they suffer in the bird stores is so great that she feels it to be "a work of charity to purchase them," yet she does not seem to see that every purchaser is in a measure accountable for this suffering. If no one would buy the birds, the traffic would soon cease.