Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1885 — PARIS CUSTOMS. [ARTICLE]

PARIS CUSTOMS.

The Chaffinches—How They Are Caught and Sold. Sportive Parisians of a not very refined type are; addicted to a brutal form of amusement called combats de pinsons. A pinson is that pretty and charmingly familiar little bird which we call English chaffinch. Its readiness to sing is taken advantage of by Parisian sportsmen for their Sunday afternoon amusement. It takes the place of dog-fighting, which has become too dangerous a recreation to be much indulged in now. To realize the extent to which combats do pinsons are carried one must pay a visit to the bird market on the Quai ahx Fleurs. It is a very curious corner of Paris and swarms with strange types of humanity. There is a bird craze as well as an oldchina craze, an autograph craze and a postage-stamp craze. Of all places the bird-crazed man or woman can be best studied at the marohe aux oiseaux, with their noses almost touching cages containing all kinds of birds, French and foreign, including those which for the crime of superior intelligence are condemned to walk like galley slaves all their lives, turning a mill for their daily bread, and drawing up their water in buckets. White mice, white rats, gninea pigs, angora cats, and woolly dogs, are also caged up like the birds." But the most animated part of the market is that where chaffinches are sold by the bird-catchers to those who cultivate the pastime already mentioned. There are in Paris two “Societies de Combats de Pinsons,” holding meetings every Sunday from April to June —the season when the poor chaffinches are in love, and therefore are most musical. Each member arrives with a cage containing his bird. The cages are numbered and are fastened along a wall, each about a yard from the other. Then somebody is selected to count how many times each bird goes through his song in an hour. The members sit near, with slates and chalk in their hands, to check the official counter, and for an hour nothing is heard but the singing of the birds. All this, although very silly, would be excusable were it not for the barbarous practice of making the birds blind in order that they may sing better. The chaffinch, soon after it has been caught, is kept in total darkness for ten (Jays. Then its bwner takes hold of it with one hand and holds a red-hot wire in the other. The little victim, seeing a sudden light and feeling the heat, closes its eyes, when the lids are immediately sealed down forever with the hot iron. It is strange, indeed, that in a country Where a law exists for the prevention of cruelty such practices should go unchecked. It must not be supposed tjiat the love of bird-music is the motive of these competitions. The motive is to be found in the passion for betting which, judged by many of its conseauences, seems as mischievous as any hat springs in the human breast. — Paris Cor. Boston Transcript.