Birds to Keep. 5 



thinking themselves very lucky because they all 

 got fed. Living thus amongst them, it was natural 

 by degrees to get into a birdish way of viewing 

 things ; feeling the chief consideration to be not 

 what might answer, but what was really natural : 

 and though it is indisputable that in a cage, the 

 state of birds is so far unnatural that they are deprived 

 to a great degree of exercise, still they are in 

 very frequent motion ; and in a room or aviary, no 

 one who watches them for a single day, can think 

 they are too stationary. 



CHAPTER II. 



BIRDS TO KEEP. 



1. THE heading, Birds to Keep, gives a wide range, 

 indeed. So various are the tastes, so numerous the 

 birds, so different the accommodation in different 

 persons' reach. But to speak only of taste. There 

 are the many who delight in a talking bird a 

 Starling or a Jackdaw, or perhaps a Magpie and 

 when the accomplished bird has come, as these birds 

 do, to some untimely end, the wicker cage is filled by, 

 perhaps, a Thrush or Blackbird ; for I do not observe 

 that pets of the Jackdaw genus are frequently replaced. 

 Then there are the pretty white Doves ; they are 



