104 OUR BIRD ALLIES. 
on, gradually, but surely, winning from pestilence 
and decay the land which, when reclaimed, could no 
longer afford them a home, and then gave place to 
others, who, taking up the work where these had left 
it off, again bore their share in the mighty task which 
even yet is not altogether accomplished. And in the 
raven and his fellow-workers we see the latter-day 
representatives of this mighty host, mighty in the 
present, mightier still in the past, and until the purifi- 
cation of the world is complete, and their services are 
no longer required, they will continue to work on in 
the interests of man, unless man himself should be 
foolish enough to prevent them from doing so. 
THERE is, Or was, in some parts of the country a 
curious tradition, alluded to by Addison, to the effect 
that the raven was originally white, and that his 
change of hue has been caused by his want of con- 
trol over that unruly member, the tongue. In Addi- 
son’s own words, 
The raven once in snowy plumes was drest, 
White as the whitest dove’s unsullied breast ; 
His tongue, his prating tongue, has changed him quite 
To sooty blackness, from the purest white. 
The exact manner in which so remarkable a change 
was brought about, however, does not seem to have 
been explained. 
Another tradition, more complimentary to the bird, 
and probably due in the first place to the scriptural 
