RAVEN AND SEAGULL 163 



bird-tanks near their mosques or marabouts and 

 realising, what so many tame ravens since, one of 

 my own amongst them, have failed to realise, that 

 he would be drowned if he fell into it, was observed 

 bringing stone after stone and dropping them into 

 the basin, till the water rose sufficiently for him to 

 be able to quench his thirst from it, in safety. 



The strange story of yet another raven I owe, 

 in outline, to Mr John Digby, of the Middle 

 Temple, who got it from his friend, the owner, 

 and himself saw much of what he relates. A female 

 raven, known, at that time, to be sixty years of age, 

 and who had passed much of her early and middle 

 life with a strange companion, a blind porcupine, 

 was given, in the year 1854, by Mr J. H. Gurney, 

 the well-known ornithologist, to the rector of 

 Bluntisham in Huntingdonshire. The bird seemed 

 so disconsolate at the loss of her old surroundings, 

 that her new owner, failing to get another raven, 

 managed to obtain a seagull as her companion. A 

 warm friendship soon sprang up between the two 

 birds. They followed one another about everywhere, 

 and the raven would often treat her companion 

 to pieces of putrid meat which she had buried, for 

 her private consumption, in the shrubberies. These 

 were delicacies in the eyes of the raven, but they 



