THE EAGLE AND THE CANARY 183 



most important muscles and experience once more, 

 although in a very limited degree, the old delicious 

 sensation of gliding at will through the void air. 

 The wires of their new cage would be of brass or 

 of some bright metal, and the wooden parts and 

 perches green enamelled, or green variegated with 

 brown and grey, and the roof would be hung with 

 glass lustres, to quiver and sparkle into drops of 

 violet, red, and yellow light, gladdening these little 

 lovers of bright colours ; for so we deem them. I 

 should also add gay flowers and berries, crocus and 

 buttercup and dandehon, hips and haws and moun- 

 tain ash and yellow and scarlet leaves — ^all seasonable 

 jewellery from woods and hedges and from the 

 orchard and garden. Then would come the heaviest 

 part of my task, which would be to satisfy their 

 continual craving for new tastes in food, their 

 delight in an endless variety, I should go to the 

 great seed-merchants of London and buy samples 

 of all the cultivated seeds of the earth, and not feed 

 them in a trough, or manger, like heavy domestic 

 brutes, but give it to them mixed and scattered in 

 small quantities, to be searched for and gladly found 

 in the sand and gravel and turf on the wide floor of 

 the cage. And, higher up, the wires of their dwelling 

 would be hung with an endless variety of seeded 

 grasses, and sprays of all trees and plants, good, 

 bad, and indifferent. For if the volatile bird dines 



