THE EAGLE AND THE CANARY. ]P>7 
which we, in our ignorance or want of consideration, 
inflict on our caged animals — our pets on com- 
pulsion. Small, because an almost infinite variety 
of flavours drawn from the whole vegetable kingdom 
— a hundred flavours for every one in the dietary 
which satisfies our heavier mammalian natures — is 
a condition of the little wild bird's existence, and 
essential to its well-being and perfect happiness. 
And so, to remedy this defect, I went out into the 
garden, and with grasses and pungent buds, and 
leaves of a dozen different kinds, I decorated the 
cage until it looked less like a prison than a bower. 
And now for an hour the little creatures have been 
busy with their varied green fare, each one tasting 
half a dozen different leaves every minute, hopping 
here and there and changing places with his fellows, 
glancing their bright little eyes this way and that, 
and all the time uttering gratulatory notes in the 
canary's conversational tone. And their language 
is not altogether untranslatable. I listen to one, 
a pretty pure yellow bird, but slightly tyrannical 
in his treatment of the others, and he says, or seems 
to say, " This is good, I like it, only the old leaf is 
tough ; the buds would be better. . . . These are 
certainly not so good. / tasted them out of com- 
pliment to nature, though they were scarcely 
palatable. . . . No, that was not my own expression ; 
it was said by Thoreau, perhaps the only human 
