506 CORVUS CORAX. 



a body, and did not return to the island. It was in this nume- 

 rous congregation of ravens that the white individual of which 

 1 have already made mention occurred, and which the people, 

 considering it as the royal bird, regarded wdth a kind of su- 

 perstitious reverence. On another occasion, when a wdiale 

 had been cast ashore on the farm of Big Scarista, I have seen 

 these birds impatiently waiting on the rocks around, until the 

 people who w^ere flencing it went home, carrying creels full 

 of the flesh with them for domestic consumption, when the 

 ravens descended to the carcase, and gorged themselves with 

 all haste. 



Whatever may be said by closet-naturalists as to the unri- 

 valled adaptation of tlie point of the upper mandible of the 

 Rapacious Birds for tearing flesh, I can assert from observation 

 that the bill of the Raven is quite as efficient in this point of 

 view. That bird can not only with great ease tear ofl" morsels 

 of flesh, but can pick the smallest fragments from the bones, 

 and rend the intestines in pieces. When engaged upon a large 

 carcase, they conduct themselves very much in the manner of 

 the North American Vultures, as described by Wilson and Mr. 

 Audubon. I well remember standing when a boy for a long 

 time to observe the proceedings of about a dozen ravens devour- 

 ing a dead cow that had been dragged to the sand banks on the 

 farm of Northtown. Some were tearing up the flesh of the 

 external parts, others dragging out the intestines, and two or 

 three had made their w^ay into the cavity of the abdomen. It 

 was amusing, and perhaps might be disgusting to a delicately 

 organised snuiF-taking and clean-fingered gentleman-inspector 

 of birds' skins, to see them drag out the intestine to the dis- 

 tance of several feet. While one endeavoured to separate a 

 morsel, another pulled it from him, when a third seized it in 

 his turn. They allowed me then to come wdthin twenty yards 

 or so ; but when some years after I carried a gun on my ram- 

 bles, I could in no instance get w^ithin shot of ravens thus oc- 

 cupied unless by creeping up under cover of a bank, and indeed 

 very seldom even then, as those flying about or stationed on an 

 eminence gave warning to the rest. 



It has seemed to me strange that in a country w^here, under 



