158 THE RAVEN 



to build, year after year. Year after year, the hen 

 bird was shot upon the nest by an insensate game- 

 keeper ; and, year after year, the male bird came 

 back, with a new mate, to share her predecessor's 

 fate ; at last, the male bird was shot as well, and the 

 gamekeeper thought that he had done with them 

 for ever. But a fresh pair, doubtless birds of the 

 same stock which had been hatched there safely, 

 before the reign of the bloodthirsty gamekeeper 

 had begun, came, next year, and shared the same 

 fate. Since then, the place knows them no more. 

 The same spirit of local attachment, I have 

 repeatedly observed, brings a pair of ravens, which, 

 for some reason or other, have forsaken a former 

 home, to revisit it. Flying high in air over it, they 

 drop, as it were, from the clouds upon it, perch upon 

 their favourite trees, and outdo themselves, while 

 there, in their garrulity, chattering, as is probable 

 in so intensely conservative a bird, if not of Elijah 

 and of Odin, at all events of the good old times 

 which they have themselves known. Now it is 

 probable, I think, that it is this local attachment of 

 a pair of ravens to a particular wood or tree which 

 has given rise to the belief that the raven is a very 

 Nestor among birds, a Nestor in age, as well as in 

 wisdom and eloquence. Two or three generations 



