THE RAVEN'S NEST 79 



proached me for my senile slowness. We stopped to 

 rest at the foot, and I was just telling him that the 

 Cornishmen hate the raven because to their ears he 

 always cries "Corpse, corpse!" when suddenly the 

 bird itself came back again. It flew across the valley 

 and alighted on a tree-top by the opposite cliff, 

 looking like a monster crow, being about one-third 

 longer. One might mistake a crow for a raven, 

 but never a raven for a crow. If there be any doubt 

 about the bird, it is always safe to set it down as a 

 crow. 



The flight of the raven, which consisted of two 

 flaps and a soar, and its long tail resembling that of 

 an enormous grackle, were its most evident field- 

 marks. 



For long we sat and watched the wary birds, until, 

 chilled through by the driving rain, we started to 

 cover the ten miles that lay between us and the 

 house of Squire McMahon, a mountain friend of 

 the Collector, where we planned to pass the night. 

 On the way the Collector told me that he saw his 

 first raven while wandering through the mountains 

 in the spring of 1909, and how he trailed and hunted 

 and watched until, in 1910, he found the first nest. 

 Since then he had found twelve. His system was a 

 simple one. Selecting from a gazetteer a list of moun- 

 tain villages with wild names, such as Bear Creek, 

 Paddy's Mountain, and Panther Run, he would 

 write to the postmasters for the names of noted hunt- 

 ers and woodsmen. From them he would secure 

 more or less accurate information about the haunts 



