Many were the birds that fell victims to the desire to keep them in richly ornamented cages in which they died of hunger, says Epictetus, sooner than be slaves. The canary which takes more kindly to captivity was unknown till it was brought to Italy in the sixteenth century. Parrots there were, but Roman parrots were not long-lived: they shared the common doom: “To each his sufferings, all are _pets_.” The parrots of Corinna and of Melior which ought to have lived to a hundred or, at any rate, to have had the chance of dying of grief at the loss of their possessors (as a parrot did that I once knew), enjoyed fame and fortune for as brief a span as Lesbia’s sparrow. Melior’s parrot not only had brilliant green feathers but also many accomplishments which are described by its master’s friend, the poet Statius. On one occasion, it sat up half the night at a banquet, hopping from one guest to another and talking in a way that excited great admiration; it even shared the good fare and on the morrow it died—which was less than surprising. I came across an old-fashioned criticism of this poem in which Statius is scolded for showing so much genuine feeling about ... a parrot! The critic was right in one thing—the genuine feeling is there; those who have known what a companion a bird may be, will appreciate the little touch: “You never felt alone, dear Melior, with its open cage beside you!” Now the cage is empty; it is “_la cage sans oiseaux_” which Victor Hugo prayed to be spared from seeing. Some translator turned this into “a nest without birds,” because he thought that a cage without birds sounded unpoetical, but Victor Hugo took care of truth and left poetry to take of itself. And whatever may be the ethics of keeping cage birds, true it is that few things are more dismal than the sight of the little mute, tenantless dwelling which was yesterday alive with fluttering love.