It is not improbable that keeping caged insects as pets may again become a Western custom, as it was in Greek times, when cages were made of rushes or straw for the little creatures.

I suppose you have heard that the Japanese custom is very likely to become a fashion in America.

If that should really happen, the fact would certainly have an effect upon poetry.

I think that it is very likely to happen.
The French poets who have written pretty things about insects are nearly all poets of our own times.

Some of them treat the subject from the old Greek standpoint--indeed the beautiful poem of Heredia upon the tomb of a grasshopper is perfectly Greek, and reads almost like a translation from the Greek.