THE EAGLE AND THE CANARY. 139 
most important organs, 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 dandelion, hips and haws and 
mountain 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 
