498 THE RAVEN. 



was so well adapted to obtain its subsistence amidst the 

 scene of desolation; and the fact that it did not return into 

 the ark would afford Noah a sign that the first stage of the 

 subsidence of the waters was accomplished." 



The poets of all time have made the Raven, with its 

 hoarse, guttural tones, and its supposed untimely flight, the 

 sign and symbol of the darkest coming evils. Has the 

 night given us a mysterious and awful idea of darkness ? 

 The Raven has furnished our most beautiful and poetic 

 conception of blackness. The peculiar majesty of his form 

 and color is a dark point in nature's picture, most essential 

 to its completeness; the absence of his weird tones would 

 greatly detract from the harmony and significance of bird- 

 music; and what a noticeable break in our literature would 

 come with his departure! 



Audubon assigns the nest of the Raven to some inaccessi- 

 ble cliff, and such no doubt is its most natural location; but 

 in the absence of suitable rocky cliffs, it is placed in a tree. 

 On the Mud and Seal Islands it is built in the flat-topped, 

 low spruces, so common to the locality. Generally placed 

 under a canopy of thick, broad branches, it is made of 

 large, crooked, weather-worn sticks, closely and artistically 

 laid, being rimmed up with finer material and well lined 

 with wool; the same nest being repaired from year to year. 

 Thus, in course of time, it becomes quite bulky, like that of 

 the large Buzzards or the Eagle. The eggs, 4-6, and some 

 1.75x1.40, are bluish-green, spotted all over, but more at 

 the butt, with brown and pale purple, the ground color being 

 much lighter or darker in different specimens, and the extent 

 of marking being subject to great variation. The nesting 

 begins as early as March, in Nova Scotia, and the whole 

 family are abroad in June. 



The Raven is of almost world-wide distribution; and that 



