1. A large bird-cage: an aviary. Also fig. and in fig. context.
1630. B. Jonson, New Inn, V. i. She … now sits penitent and solitary, Like the forsaken turtle, in the volary Of the light Heart, the cage, she hath abused.
1654. Flecknoe, Ten Years Trav., 110. In lieu of imagining it flying about the world, we may imagin it rather pent up, and fluttering about some narrow Bird-cage or volary.
1687. A. Lovell, trans. Thevenot’s Trav., II. 105. On the left hand before a Garden on the River-side, there is a Volary full of rare Fowl, as Estradges, Peacocks and others.
1718. Ozell, trans. Tournefort’s Voy., II. 235. The gardens, the volaries, the dog-kennel, the falconry, the square and bazar … are worth seeing.
1743[?]. Lady M. W. Montagu, Lett., to Mrs. Forster (1893), II. 124. I find myself so improperly lodged as if I inhabited a volery.
1756. Mrs. Calderwood, in Coltness Coll. (Maitland Club), 186. Here is a flat, laid out like a parterre,… and a volary, which is a little place with the face of it wire.
1892. Daily News, 3 Sept., 5/3. Birds … living happily in … confinement in very large cages, in spacious volaries.
transf. a. 1637. B. Jonson, Underwoods, xvi. Wks. (Rtldg.), 694/1. I thought thee then our Orpheus, that wouldst try, Like him, to make the air one volary.
1640. Carew, Poems, Wks. (1824), 34. Yet thou hadst daintyes, as the skie Had only been thy volarie.
attrib. 1720. Strype, Stow’s Surv., VI. iii. II. 624/1. Edward Story, Esq; Volary-keeper to King Charles II. 1684.
2. collect. The birds kept in an aviary. Also fig.
1693. Locke, Educ., § 94. An old Boy, at his first Appearance with all the Gravity of his Ivy-Bush about him, is sure to draw on him the Eyes and Chirping of the whole Town Volery.
1745. trans. Columella’s Husb., VIII. x. These things wipe off and remove the nauseating of such of them [thrushes] as sit loitering in the aviaries, and make the whole volary more greedy and voracious.
