140 
Birds and Flowers . 
branches, looking so very pretty and seeming so 
very happy. 
If you want, however, to have your shrubs nice 
and bright-looking, your best way will be to have 
two sets of them, and to change about every few 
days ; the set not in use should then get a good 
washing, and thus they will keep clean. If you 
leave them in very long at a time they will not 
come clean again ; and if you are short of trees, 
you can use pretty boughs of evergreens or Pine, 
planted firmly in flower-pots, when the birds will 
not know the difference. A pot of Tulips afflicted 
with green fly, or a dish of Crocuses going out of 
flower is a wonderful catch in winter ; and in 
summer, you can often bring in a sod of turf, with 
perhaps some chickweed or groundsel planted in it, 
or a pot full of young lettuces, which will rapidly 
be devoured. 
I am sure you will find the open sort of cage a 
great deal the most amusing. If you like to hang 
it up against some wall, that wall is itself a screen 
to the birds on one side ; and if they stand in the 
window the glass forms again a shelter, though 
they get all the light. Still, perhaps the nicest 
plan is to have a long slide of glass — you can edge 
it yourselves with stout paper gummed on firmly, 
