1901-1902.] The Folk-Lore of Natural History. 331 
was sometimes tamed by watching it night and day to 
prevent it sleeping :— 
“You must be watched ere you be made tame, must you?” 
—“Troilus and Cressida,” Act III. se. ii. 
“Tl watch him tame.” 
—“ Othello,” Act III. se. iii. 
THE RAVEN. 
Go where you will over the face of the wide world, the 
well-known hoarse croak of the raven is still to be heard. 
Through a long course of centuries the raven has been 
regarded as a foreteller of good or evil, and even to this 
day there are those who believe the raven’s croak predicts 
a death— 
“The raven himself is hoarse 
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements.” 
—“ Macbeth,” Act I. se. v. 
“O! it comes o’er my memory 
As doth the raven o’er the infected house 
Boding to all.” 
—“ Othello,” Act IV. se. i. 
A curious belief is mentioned with regard to the rearing of its 
young :— 
“Some say that ravens foster forlorn children 
The whilst their own birds famish in their nest,” 
—“Titus Andronicus,” Act II. se. iii 
It would appear from some passages in the Scriptures that the 
desertion of their young had not escaped the observation of the 
inspired writers. It was certainly a belief in olden times that 
when the raven saw its young ones newly hatched and covered 
with down, it conceived such an aversion to them that it for- 
sook them and did not return to the nest till a darker plumage 
had shown itself. And to this belief commentators suppose the 
_ Psalmist alludes when he says, “He giveth to the beast his 
_ food, and to the young ravens which cry ” (Ps. elxvii. 9). “Who 
provideth for the raven his food? when his young ones ery 
unto God, they wander for lack of food” (Job xxxviii. 41), 
An old writer also says that “the raven’s young be fed with 
__ the dew of heaven all the time they have no black feathers,” 
