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CAGE AND SINGING BIRDS. 
Orioles when wild feed upon fruit and insects ; in confine- 
ment they should have a good proportion of such food — 
cherries they are especially fond of ; they must be kept in a 
large cag-e, and not let loose in the aviary, as they are quar- 
relsome and spiteful. The cage at night should have a 
thick covering, or they will be very restless, nndrub oft* their 
feathers against the bars. The captive male becomes like 
the female, losing the beautiful black and yellow colours. 
They have not much of a natural song, hut may be taught 
to pipe and whistle airs, if taken young. 
CROWS, &c. 
Among the corvine birds, or crows, are several species 
which, on account of their entertaining manners and facility 
of uttering articulate sounds, are frequently found in a domes- 
ticated state ; they are neither very elegant nor very cleanly 
cage birds, but they are often extremely amusing*, and 
although generally full of mischief, and at times spiteful 
and savage, yet we tolerate and even cherish them in and 
about our homes, for the same reason as induces us to make 
pets of monkeys, and bosom friends of some really very dis- 
gusting, unclean, and unloveable creatures. And what is 
that reason ? If our readers seriously ask the question, we 
must confess our inability to answer it. The philosophy of 
the thing has yet, we fancy, to be discovered. Perhaps, to a 
believer in the doctrine of transmigration of souls it might 
be all clear enough ; ties of relationship, and so forth, would 
explain the matter ; but to us it does appear a great mystery, 
about which we do not care to bother our brains at present, 
our business being not to explain why these greedy, thievish, 
noisy, and conceited feathered bipeds are thus cherished and 
])rotected, but how they are to be treated in that state of 
dependency on man in which it pleases us to place them. 
THE RAVEN. 
This is the king of the crow family, a grave, stately bird, 
with a saintly aspect, and a voice that sounds like one from 
a sepulchre ; a grim, ungainly creature, for ever turning* his 
head to look over his shoulder, as though pursued by an 
evil conscience. A strange mystery seems to hang* about 
the raven— a shadow that may not be lifted : he is the bird 
