RAVENS IN SOMERSET 169 



loud, angry bark, as if a deep-chested man had 

 barked hke a blood-hound. 



How strange it seems, when we come to think of 

 it, that the owners of great estates and vast parks, 

 who are lovers of wild nature and animal life, and 

 should therefore have been most anxious to preserve 

 this bird, have allowed it to be extirpated ! "A 

 raven tree," says the author of the Birds of Wiltshire, 

 " is no mean ornament to a park, and speaks of a wide 

 domain and large timber, and an ancient family ; for 

 the raven is an aristocratic bird and cannot brook a 

 confined property and trees of a young growth. Would 

 that its predilection were more humoured and a 

 secure retreat allowed it by the larger proprietors 

 in the land ! " 



The wide domains, the large timber, and the ancient 

 families survive, but the raven has vanished. It 

 occasionally takes a young rabbit. But the human 

 ravens of Somerset — to wit, the men and boys who 

 have as little right to the rabbits — do the same. I 

 do not suppose that in this way fewer than ten thou- 

 sand to twenty thousand rabbits are annually 

 " picked up," or " poached " — if any one hkes that 

 word better — in the county. Probably a larger 

 number. The existence of a pair of ravens on an 

 estate of twenty or thirty thousand acres would not 



