THE RAVEN. 497 



cultivated parts of the country. For instance, about Niag- 

 ara Falls, and along the south shores of Lakes Erie and 

 Ontario, where Wilson reported it as abundant in his time, 

 it seems now to have entirely disappeared. 



Though its dignified proportions, its color of magnificent 

 black, and its distant, wary and stately ways, as well as the 

 inscrutable mystery with which superstition has always 

 invested it, give it a very high, aesthetic regard, many of its 

 habits are by no means pleasing. In respect to diet, it is to 

 a great extent a carrion-eater, feeding especially on dead 

 fish which float up on the shores. Not only does it destroy 

 birds and their eggs and weakly young lambs, but also the 

 tender young of animals generally. 



This magnificent bird may have much said in his favor, 

 however. One who was most familiar with the habits of 

 birds says that "the Raven destroys numberless insects, 

 grubs and worms; that he kills mice, moles and rats, when- 

 ever he can find them ; that he will seize the weasel, the young 

 opossum, and the skunk; that, with the perseverance of a 

 cat, he will watch the burrows of foxes, and pounce on the 

 cubs." Even his carrion-eating propensities have their 

 utility; so that it is highly probable that the Raven, not- 

 withstanding all that may be said against him, is much more 

 useful than injurious. Indeed, he is possessed of so much 

 character, and has filled so large a place in history, that the 

 world would seem incomplete without him. He is the first 

 bird mentioned in the Bible. When the flood began to decline, 

 Noah "sent forth a Raven, which went forth to and fro until 

 the waters were dried up from off the earth." "That is," says 

 Tristram, the celebrated English writer on the natural his- 

 tory of the Bible, " the Raven kept going and returning to 

 the ark, resting on it, but not entering into it again, and 

 finding its food in the floating carcasses. No other bird 

 32 



