94 THE RAVEN 



or his sight, is sure to present himself and claim 

 his share. If the word " ravenous" is not derived 

 from "raven" as Professor Skeat tells us it is 

 not, and we are bound to believe him it might 

 well be so, for it exactly expresses what the raven 

 ever has been, ever is, and ever will be ; and when, 

 in addition to his own voracity, he has to supply 

 that of the five or six "young ravens that cry," 

 he is bound to fly at higher game, and will " lift " 

 without scruple a nest of partridge's eggs, a rabbit, or 

 a leveret. When his nest is built, as it generally is, 

 beneath some overhanging rock which quite con- 

 ceals it from view from above, its position may 

 sometimes be discovered by the remains of rabbits, 

 neatly laid, in the short grass on the top of the cliff, 

 in what I was going to call his " larder." But a 

 larder implies an amount of economy and self- 

 restraint, which apart from his purely secretive 

 tendencies, it is not in the raven to practise. " Con- 

 sider the ravens : for they neither sow nor reap ; 

 which neither have storehouse nor barn ; and God 

 feedeth them." A rabbit warren is, generally, not far 

 distant from the raven's eyrie ; and the young rabbits, 

 as they sun themselves in front of their burrows, fall 

 an easy prey. On one occasion the old warrener 

 at Whitenose Cliff told me that he had counted the 



