76 THE RAVEN 



the crow or corvine tribe. That tribe, it should be 

 remarked for the sake of the general reader, includes 

 the crow itself, carrion and hooded, the rook, the 

 magpie, the jackdaw, the jay, and, closely akin to 

 them, if not actually of them, the Cornish chough. 

 Each one of these birds has noteworthy character- 

 istics of its own, and at the head of them all as 

 much, perhaps, above them, as their genus stands 

 above all other genera stands the subject of this 

 and the two following chapters, the raven. 



The raven (Corvus corax) is the biggest, the 

 strongest, the boldest, the cleverest, the most wary, 

 the most amusing, the most voracious I am afraid 

 I must also add, by far the rarest, and that in an 

 ever-accelerating degree of its kind. In the 

 opinion of some of the most observant of hill-and-field 

 naturalists, like Macgillivray and Waterton, and of 

 some of the most recent and most strictly scientific 

 of ornithologists, Professor Foster and Professor A. 

 Newton, he takes his place, for reasons which they 

 give, not only at the head of his own corvine family, 

 but of all birds whatsoever. In other words, in 

 their judgment though it is impossible to record it 

 without regret and without demur he has dethroned 

 the king of birds himself, the bird of Jupiter, the 

 wielder of the thunderbolt, the symbol of imperial 



