178 THE RAVEN. 



where food may chance to be found. Should an 

 animal die, or a limb of fresh carrion be on the 

 hooks in the tree, the hoarse croak of the raven is 

 sure immediately to be heard, calling his congeners 

 to the banquet. We see it daily in its progress of 

 inspection, or high in the air on a transit to other 

 regions, hastening, we conjecture, to some distant 

 prey. With the exception of the snipe, no bird 

 seems more universally spread over the surface of 

 our globe than the raven, inhabiting every zone, 

 the hot, the temperate, the severe feeding upon, 

 and removing noxious substances from the earth, 

 of which it obtains intimation by mean of a faculty 

 we have little conception of. Sight it cannot be ; 

 and we know not of any fetor escaping from an 

 animal previous to putrescence, so subtile as to call 

 these scavengers of nature from the extremity of 

 one county to that of another ; for it is manifest, 

 from the height which they preserve in their flight, 

 and the haste they are making, that their departure 

 has been from some far distant station, having a 

 remote and urgent object in contemplation. 



In England the raven does not seem to abound ; 

 but it is most common on the shores of harbours, 

 or near great rivers, where animal substances are 

 more frequently to be met with than in inland 

 places. In Greenland, and Iceland, where putrescent 

 fishy substances abound, they appear to be almost 

 domesticated. Horace calls the raven " annosa 



