WOES OF THE CAGED
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sut,—Mr. Kingsford-Venner, in common with many other people, appears to consider that to breed wild species in captivity lessens the enormity of the offence of imprisoning them. Indeed, he seems to confer captivity upon them as a boon, regarding the comfort of eating in security as out- weighing the joy of living in a freedom that is coupled with occasional perils.
Surely the practice increases the offence. God, or nature, or evolution, or chance—to offer a choice of creative agencies —has endowed wild creatures with a consciousness which in the species has the faculty of enlargement until it has outgrown Mid changed the forms in which it operates. But that consciousness demands for its growth the free interplay of instinct and experience, and gives as its guerdon the joy of movement and the delights of sun and earth and air.
Those who capture wild animals go far to destroy the free species; while the zoo-bound survivors—if they breed, produce simulacra whose experience is limited to a bored -observation of the gaping creatures who, pass their cages, and whose consciousness is generation by generation degraded to some- thing little better than that of a vegetable. That a tiger should come to taking pleasure in having its body tickled by the gaoler who feeds it, is only. a measure-of its degradation and—if it is for the study of wild nature that we keep -it- how-valueless as an object-lesson it is.—I am, Sir, &c., J. LEONARD CATRER.. Upnleads, Bexhill Old Town, Sussex,
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