142 
Birds and Flowers. 
and then the chances are you won’t do so well as 
now, while you are contented to go on a small 
scale, naturally, and to be real friends with such 
birds as you have. It makes so great a difference 
if you understand birds’ tastes ! They are as 
particular as people, and quite as capricious. 
One likes one sort of cage, another likes another, 
and a third likes the shade, while a fourth prefers 
plenty of light ; and then they seem to take most 
unreasonable likes and dislikes in the Canary 
party — as violent and determined as unreasonable 
things are generally ! 
The Canaries will sing charmingly all the win- 
ter, the cock-birds I mean, for the others do not 
sing, though they twitter a good deal, and make 
you think they are trying ; they will also call to 
you loudly, and hold quite long conversations. 
I had this summer a cage full of Canaries, who 
lived in a spare room, and the door was open often 
that we might hear them singing ; Pussy used on 
these occasions to creep silently upstairs, but the 
moment she arrived the Canaries used to call loudly 
with the shrill long note they always use when 
they want something, and the little geese used to 
be found sitting along the cage-front talking to 
Puss quite affably, but Puss knew better than to do 
more than look at them. I must here give you one 
