Nor, again, do machines act like a cockatoo I heard of from a witness of the scene. A lady was visiting the zoological gardens in a German town with her daughter, when the little girl was seized with the wish to possess a pretty moulted feather which was lying on the ground in the parrots’ cage. She made several attempts to reach it, but in vain. Seeing which, an old cockatoo hopped solemnly from the back of the cage and taking up the feather in his beak, handed it to the child with an air of the greatest politeness.
One of the first upholders of the idea of legislative protection of animals was Jeremy Bentham, who asked why the law should refuse its protection to any sensitive being? Most people forget the degree of opposition which was encountered by the earlier combatants of cruel practices and pastimes in England. Cobbett made a furious attack on a clergyman who (to his honour) was agitating for the suppression of bull-baiting, “the poor man’s sport,” as Cobbett called it. That it demoralised the poor man as well as tormented the bull never entered into the head of the inimitable wielder of English prose, pure and undefiled, who took it under his (happily) ineffectual protection. “The common law fully sanctions the baiting of bulls,” he wrote, “and, I believe, that to sell the flesh of a bull which has _not_ been baited is an offence which is punishable by that very law to which you appeal” (“_Political Register_,” June, 1802).
Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had, in their day, to undergo almost as much criticism and ridicule in England as they now meet with in some parts of the Continent. Even the establishment of the Dogs’ Home in London raised a storm of disapproval, as may be seen by any one who turns over the files of the _Times_ for October, 1860. If the friends of humanity persevere, the change of sentiment which has become an accomplished fact in England will, in the end, triumph elsewhere.
Unfortunately, humane sentiment and humane practice do not progress on a level line. As long ago as 1782 an English writer named Soame Jenyns protested against the wickedness of shooting a bear on an inaccessible island of ice, or an eagle on the mountain’s top. “We are unable to give life and therefore ought not to take it away from the meanest insect without sufficient reason.” What would he say if he came back to earth to find whole species of beautiful winged creatures being destroyed to afford a barbarous ornament for women’s heads?