Northern Observations of Inland Birds 179 



hammered with a heavy stone the shell refused to yield 

 until considerable force had been applied, and I con- 

 cluded that the mussels must have been many years 

 older than I was — indeed, they looked it 1 



Determined to identify the assailant, I visited the 

 creek several times, and drawing near one day I heard a 

 sound reminiscent of the wayside stone-breaker back in 

 the Old Country. As I peered over the shelf a raven 

 immediately rose from the rocks, and I found, on climbing 

 down to the point from which he had flown, a large mussel, 

 the shell of which was already ruptured. 



An adage among stone-breakers is to the effect that it 

 is not so much the weight of the blow as the skill with 

 which it is applied that splits the rock, and indeed a feeble 

 and consumptive old man may break more stones in a 

 day than the burliest navvy that ever lived — a condition 

 of things which doubtless applies in the case of the raven. 



One of the few measures we have whereby the intelli- 

 gence of our wild creatures can be gauged is the extent 

 to which they profit by previous experience. Take for 

 example the storage habit. This exists to a greater or 

 less degree in all our most intelligent birds and beasts. 

 They have learnt by hard experience that periods of 

 scarcity are inevitable, and the reasoning powers whereby 

 they have arrived at the fact that suffering during such 

 times can be alleviated by laying aside during a time of 

 plenty, is of no mean order. The act of storing food is 

 premeditated ; it may have become an inherited habit, 

 but if such reasoning powers were possessed by the 

 species ages ago, we may argue that the present members 

 of the race at least possess equal powers. Probably they 

 have improved as the conditions of life have become 

 more and more difficult. 



To what extent wild ravens resort to storing food I 

 cannot say. I have come across numerous examples of 



M 2 



