a second time. It flew several times around the ship, and then departed and returned no more.
I have read with great interest all that the paper says on the cruelty of keeping caged birds. I have a bullfinch, and I try to make his life as happy as I can; but when I read stories about caged birds, I put the cage by the windows, and left the door open five or six times, and he never went out; but he will go out in the room and fly about, and perch again, for two or three hours, and return of his own accord to the cage. If I put my lips to the cage, he will go and fetch a couple of seeds, and when he has cracked them and made them white and soft in his beak, he comes and puts them between my lips, thinking I am hungry, and want to be fed. I therefore do not think he can be unhappy, although a neglected cage bird must be most wretched; the only thing that could atone for confinement, would be the petting and companionship of its owner. I doubt whether my bullfinch would not be more unhappy turned adrift than kept, and I am sure he has wonderful intelligence.
Whilst in India I addressed the following note to the editor of the Bombay Gazette:—
Sir,—I have read with great interest, in your paper of to-day, the account of the meeting of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. As I am myself a member, and a very earnest one, I would ask you to say something in behalf of two very ill-used animals in Bombay. Firstly, the horses in the "buggies" and "shigrams," which seem mostly starved, few of which can show four sound legs, and all of which are beaten too much. Could not some member of the Society preside at the overhauling of these poor wretches, by competent persons, say once a week; always remembering that the night cabs, if there are such things in Bombay, are drawn by the most pitiable objects, that darkness may save their brutal masters from the police? I notice that even gentlemen's coachmen here drive without the slightest judgment. They do not know how much a horse can do, or how little. They drive up and down hill just the same as on a level road, and the crack of the whip is incessant; and what in stranger, nobody tells them of it. For the first week I was here, I used to threaten to have the whip inside my carriage, and my coachman does not use it now, and his horses go much better. The bullocks have, I see, protectors, judging by the number of cases of fines for torturing them.
