THE RAVEN 63 
to rocks, towers, and hollow trees, it sometimes places its nest in 
chimneys or in rabbit-burrows, but never, or in the rarest instances, 
among the open boughs of a tree. It lays from four to six eggs, 
and feeds its young on worms and insects, which it brings home in 
the pouch formed by the loose skin at the base of its beak. When 
domesticated, its droll trickeries and capability of imitating the 
human voice and other sounds are well known. By turns affection- 
ate, quarrelsome, impudent, confiding, it is always inquisitive, 
destructive, and given to purloining ; so that however popular at 
first as a pet, it usually terminates its career by some unregretted 
accident, or is consigned to captivity in a wicker cage. 
THE RAVEN 
CORVUS CORAX 
Plumage black with purple reflections ; tail rounded, black, extending two 
inches beyond the closed wings; beak strong, black as well as the feet ; 
iris with two circles, the inner grey, the outerash-brown. Length twenty- 
five inches; width four feet. Eggs dirty green, spotted and speckled 
with brown. 
THE Raven, the largest of the Corvide, and possessing in an emin- 
ent degree all the characteristics of its tribe except sociability, is 
the bird which beyond all others has been regarded with feelings 
of awe by the superstitious in all ages. In both instances in which 
specific mention of it occurs in Holy Writ, it is singled out from 
among other birds as gifted with a mysterious intelligence. Sent 
forth by Noah when the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat, 
it perhaps found a congenial home among the lonely crags strewed 
with the carcases of drowned animals, and by failing to return, 
announced to the patriarch that a portion of the earth, though not one 
fit for his immediate habitation, was uncovered by the waters. At 
a subsequent period, honoured with the mission of supplying the 
persecuted prophet with food, it was taught to suppress its voracious 
instinct by the God who gave it. The Raven figures prominently 
in most heathen mythologies, and is almost everywhere regarded 
with awe by the ignorant even at the present time. In Scandinavian 
mythology it was an important actor; and all readers of Shake- 
speare must be familiar with passages which prove it to have been 
regarded as a bird of dire omen. 
The sad presaging Raven tolls 
The sick man’s passport in her hollow beak, 
And in the shadow of the silent night 
Doth shake contagion from her sable wing. 
Marlowe. 
In the judgment of others, its friendly mission to the Tishbite 
invested it with a sanctity whieh preserved it from molestation. 
