RAVEN. 265 



The beak is black : the irides brown and grey : the whole 

 plumage black, glossed with steel-blue and purple ; the 

 throat-feathers elongated and pointed, and more lustrous 

 than those of other parts : legs, toes and claws, black. 



The whole length of the male is twenty-six inches. The 

 wing, from the carpal joint to the tip, seventeen inches and 

 one-quarter : the first primary four inches shorter than the 

 second, which is one inch shorter than the third ; the fourth 

 a little longer than the third, and the longest in the wing : 

 the primaries are narrow and pointed, the tertials broad and 

 rounded. The tail cuneate in form. 



The female is smaller than the male ; and her plumage, 

 as also that of the young before their first moult, has less 

 metallic lustre. 



As was before announced (vol. i. page 263) it is intended 

 in this Edition only to notice some particular cases of the 

 partial or total albinism among birds which has been so 

 frequently observed. White Ravens have been known 

 from very ancient times, though their rarity was always 

 admitted, and Aristotle attributed their want of colour to 

 the season of the year and cold weather. The fact 

 that pied varieties of the Raven have been described 

 as forming a distinct species, the Corvus leucophaus of 

 Vieillot, makes a few words upon them necessary. They 

 seem always to have been most numerous in the Freroes, but 

 it has long been perfectly well known there that they form 

 no peculiar race, and that they are most frequently the 

 progeny of perfectly black parents — a pied bird, or perhaps 

 a second, being found in a brood, all the rest of which are 

 normally coloured. The amount of white they display may 

 vary from a few feathers to the greater part of the plumage, 

 the toes and claws also being not unfrequently affected in 

 like manner. Pied Ravens have occasionally occurred in the 

 British Islands, and Macgillivray mentions one which he saw 

 in Harris. In some examples, from various countries, the 

 base of the feathers, especially those of the neck, will be 

 found to be quite white, without shewing, however, any 

 trace of it as the plumage lies in its natural position. 



