NEST OF CHAFFINCH
Judging from personal knowledge of the people of London, I should say that these workmen showed in their action the feeling which the people have generally about the wild birds in the parks, and that the rook-slayers mentioned above were rare exceptions, the small percentage of ruffians which we always have to count with, just as we have to count with lunatics and criminals. Doubtless some readers will disagree with this conclusion. I know it is a common idea—one hears it often enough—that love of birds is by no means a general feeling; that it is, on the contrary, somewhat rare, and consequently that those who experience it have some reason to be proud of their superiority. To my mind all this is a pretty delusion; no one flatters himself that he is in any special way a lover of sunshine and green flowery meadows and running waters and shady trees; and I can only repeat here what I have said before, that the delight in a wild bird is as common to all men as the feeling that the sunshine is sweet and pleasant to behold.
One word more may be added here. We—that is to say, our representatives on the County Council—annually spend some thousands of pounds on gardening, in laying out beds of brilliant tulips, geraniums, and other gay flowers, but, with the exception of the cost of the little food given to the birds in frosty weather in some of the parks, not one pound, not one penny, has been spent directly on the birds; and yet there is no doubt that the birds are more to most people than the flowers; that a gorgeous bed of tulips that has cost a lot of money is regarded by a majority of visitors with a very tepid feeling of admiration compared with that which they experience at the sight or sound, whether musical or not, of any wild bird.
CHAPTER XV
THE CAT QUESTION
The cat’s unchangeable character—A check on the sparrows—Number of sparrows in London—What becomes of the annual increase—No natural check on the park sparrows—Cats in the parks—Story of a cat at Battersea Park—Rabbits destroyed by cats in Hyde Park—Number of cats in London—Ownerless cats—Their miserable condition—How cats are made ownerless—How this evil may be remedied—How to keep cats out of the parks.
As it will be necessary to show that, sooner or later, the cat question will have to be dealt with in a manner not pleasant for the cats, it may be well to say at once that I have no prejudice against this creature; on the contrary, of all the lower animals that live with or near us I admire him the most, because of his incorruptibility, his strict adherence to the principle ‘to thine own self be true.’ He lives with but not exactly in subjection to us. The coarser but more plastic dog we can and we do in a sense unmake and remake. Not so with the cat, who keeps to the terms of his ancient charter, in spite of all temptations to allow of a few of the original lines being rubbed out and some new ones written in their place. Old Æsop’s celebrated apologue is as true of to-day as of his own distant time; and thousands of years ago the worshippers of Pasht who had tender hearts must have been scandalised at their deity’s way with a mouse. It would not, perhaps, be quite in order to conclude this exordium without a reference to the poet’s familiar description of the cat as a ‘harmless necessary’ animal. The Elizabethan was doubtless only thinking of rats and mice; in the London of to-day the cat has another important use in keeping down the sparrows. But for this check sparrows would quickly become an intolerable nuisance, fluttering in crowds against our window-panes, crying incessantly for crumbs, and distressing us with the spectacle of their semi-starved condition.