100 THE RAVEN 



be done. A crafty cragsman managed to capture 

 some of the ravens on the ledge on which they 

 roosted at night, heavy with sleep and food. He 

 plucked off all their feathers, except those of their 

 wings and tails, and turned them adrift in the 

 morning. The othe"r ravens, either failing, with all 

 their acuteness, to recognise their uncanny piebald 

 comrades, or reading in them their own future fate, 

 left the island, not to return. 



I have said that the raven is a very solitary 

 bird, except when the cry of " carrion afield " on a 

 colossal scale, causes him to put up, for a time, with 

 the society of his kind. But two exceptions to the 

 rule, one of which came under my brother's, the 

 other under my own notice, are worth recording. 

 Colonel Walter Marriott Smith, R.A., tells me that, 

 in winter, the raven becomes gregarious on the 

 margin of the hills and plains in Northern India. 



I have seen them by hundreds on a vacated barrack near 

 Peshawur, during the last Afghan war. I have also watched 

 one of them, when no other human being was visible, regu- 

 larly stationing himself opposite to the fowls' big wire enclosure 

 at Peshawur, and setting to work to systematically imitate 

 their sounds, arid ridiculing them, with an air of contemptuous 

 superiority. 



My own experience was at Athens, in January 

 1898. The green slopes of Lycabettus, the lofty hill 



