130 THE RAVEN IN POETRY AND FOLK-LORE 



bring them food of their own accord.* To make 

 the picture complete, Swan, the author of Speculum 

 Mundi, 1643 A - D -> te ll s us > m a passage also quoted 

 by Mr Swainson, that this temporary disgust on the 

 part of the parents is repaid with interest by their 

 offspring, "for when they be old and have their 

 bills overgrown, they die of famine, not sharpening 

 their bills again by beating them on a stone, as the 

 eagle doth. Neither will their young ones help 

 them, but rather set upon them when they are not 

 able to resist." The Royal Society, in the hey- 

 day of their youth, were too much taken aback 

 or were they too courteous or too courtier-like ? 

 to throw any doubt upon the data assumed in 

 the famous problem of the bowl of water and the 

 fish, so solemnly put before them by their first 

 royal patron, King Charles II. Nor does it seem 



* See Appendix II. for "an enigma" of the twelfth 

 century, kindly brought to my notice by Mr W. Ravencroft 

 of Reading. It is written in rather sorry Latin hexameters, 

 but contains some very curious allusions to the story of the 

 Deluge, to the raven's disobedience to Noah, to his punish- 

 ment on land for his delinquencies on the water, and his in- 

 ability, owing, I suppose* to the doom pronounced on him by 

 Apollo, for his mischief-making in the matter of Coronis, de- 

 scribed in the last chapter, to look at, or to feed his white or red 

 callow offspring, till they have got their coat of black feathers. 

 The last line, as is usual in such effusions, contains the enigma. 



