London to John O' Groat's. 



185 



Boyston is a goodly and comfortable town, just 

 inside the eastern boundary of Hertfordshire. It has 

 its full share of half-legible and interesting antiquities, 

 including the ruins of a royal palace, a cave, and 

 several other broken monuments of the olden time, 

 all festooned with the web-work of hereditary fancies, 

 legends, and shreds of unravelled history dyed to the 

 vivid colors of variegated imagination. It also boasts 

 and enjoys a great, breezy, furzy common, large enough 

 to hold such another town, and which few in the king- 

 dom can show. Then, if it cannot cope with Grlaston- 

 bury in showing, to the envious and credulous world, 

 a thorn-tree planted by Joseph of Arimathsea, and 

 blossoming always at Christmas, it can fly a bird of 

 greater antiquity, which never flapped its wings else- 

 where, so far as I can learn. It may be the lineal 

 descendant of Noah's raven that has come down 

 to this particular community without a cross with 

 any other branch of the family. It is called "The 

 Eoyston Crow," and is a variety of the genus which 

 you will find in no other country. It is a great, 

 heavy bird, larger than his colored American cousin, 

 and is distinguished by a white back. Indeed, seen 

 walking at a distance, he looks like our Bobolink 

 expanded to the size of a large hen-hawk. To have 

 such a wild bird all to themselves, and of its own free 



