I myself until lately possessed a goldfinch which I would not have parted with for an entire aviary of the choicest songsters. He was thirteen years old when he came into my keeping, and his eyes were beginning to fail him. They grew weaker and weaker, till at last the glare of the sunlight was more than he could bear, and I made him curtains of green gauze for which he was very grateful, and never failed to reward me with a bit of extra good music when they were pulled round his cage on sultry afternoons. When he was seventeen years old he went quite blind, but that did not at all interfere with the friendship that existed between us. He knew my footstep as I entered the room, he knew my voice,—I do believe he knew my cough and sneeze from any one else's in the house. He was extremely fond of cabbage-seed, and the door of his cage having been previously opened, I had only to enter the room and call out “cabbage-seed, cabbage seed,” to make him fly out of his cage and come to me. Sometimes I would hide behind the window-curtains, or beneath a table, and it was curious to see him put his little blind head on one side for a moment, to listen in what direction my voice proceeded, and then to dart unerringly to my head or shoulder. What is most remarkable, my brother (whose voice is singularly like mine) has often tried to deceive the blind goldfinch by (im)personating me; but I do believe he might have called “cabbage-seed, cabbage-seed,” till it sprouted in his hand, and the blind finch would not stir an inch. One morning when the blind bird was upwards of eighteen years old, I entered the room; alas! he was deaf to the enticement of cabbage-seed—he was dead at the bottom of his cage.
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