82 THE RAVEN 



cries, so admirably harmonising with those clumps 

 of Scotch firs and those expanses of wild moor- 

 land in which they may still, occasionally, be 

 found. 



Secondly, my chief field of observation has, as 

 in the case of owls, been not so much in the county 

 of Middlesex in which my working life has been 

 passed for no wild raven has been heard or seen 

 for many years past, or ever will, I fear, be heard 

 or seen again, within some fifty or more miles of 

 London as in the county of Dorset, a county which, 

 with its breezy downs, its flint-bestrewn uplands, its 

 dark fir plantations, its limpid streams, its stretches 

 of bog and marsh and heather, its magnificent coast- 

 line, often broken into deep and retired inlets, 

 possesses nearly every variety of soil and climate 

 suitable for bird-life. In Dorset, I may add that I 

 have had quite exceptional opportunities, as will be 

 seen hereafter, of studying the raven "at home." 

 The habits of a bird so "shy and sly" as a raven 

 can be observed, at anything like close quarters, only 

 during the breeding season, when the natural affec- 

 tion of the parent for its young does so much to 

 transform its shyness into familiarity, and its slyness 

 into dauntless courage. 



The raven is as nearly cosmopolitan as any bird 



