CHAPTER IV 



THE RAVEN PERSONAL EXPERIENCES 



MY intimate personal acquaintance with the 

 raven dates from 1855, nearly half a century ago, 

 when I was a boy of fifteen years old, at Milton 

 Abbas School, Blandford. The circumstances 

 may be worth relating. I had for some years 

 been fond of birds, in a rather truer sense than 

 that in which Tom Tulliver was " fond of them 

 fond, that is, of throwing stones at them." Some 

 six miles from Blandford, between it and Wimborne, 

 at the end of a stretch of open down, and near 

 the park of Kingston Lacy, there stands, on high 

 ground, a noble clump of Scotch firs, younger and 

 smaller trees outside, older and bigger within. 

 Round the clump run several concentric circles 

 of fosse and rampart, the work of bygone races, 

 British, Roman, or Saxon, which give to the whole 



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