84 THE RAVEN 



Central Asia. A much- travelled friend of mine, 

 Mr Robert Hayne, just returned from the Thian 

 Shan mountains, tells me that he is the commonest 

 of all birds there. His croak is to be heard on the 

 Himalayas and the Hindu Kush, on the Suliman 

 mountains and on Mount Elbruz, on the Taurus, 

 the Caucasus, and the Lebanon, on the Balkans, 

 the Alps and the Pyrenees, throughout the whole 

 range of the Atlas, on Mount Sinai, and as the 

 dawn of history and tradition and the continuity of 

 bird-life seem to demand on that "huge boundary- 

 stone " where the three empires, Russian, Turkish, 

 and Persian, still meet, Mount Ararat. 



To come nearer home : on the mainland of 

 Scotland and Ireland, in spite of incessant persecu- 

 tion, the raven maintains a precarious existence 

 amongst the wild deer forests and the grander of 

 the mountain peaks. In England, though, as I 

 have remarked, he has vanished or is vanishing 

 fast from the midland districts, he still breeds on 

 many of the rifted rocks and the precipitous head- 

 lands which mark its coast-line. Till lately I do 

 not know whether he does so still he bred on 

 Flamborough and on Beachy Head, and on the 

 Freshwater Cliffs in the Isle of Wight. But he 

 seems to cling most fondly of all to the coasts of 



