172 THE RAVEN 



dexterous movement of his neck and beak, without 

 ever shifting his position, and hardly ever missing 

 one, even on its rebound, when thrown against the 

 opposite wall of the cage. Morsels of food given 

 to him he would pack, one after the other, into the 

 expansive skin of his lower mandible, till it was 

 puffed out like a pouch ; and he then would look at 

 you with a queer and knowing " where-are-they-all- 

 gone-to ? " sort of expression. When he had given 

 you time to guess, he would gravely reproduce 

 them, one after the other, and proceed to hide them 

 in various parts of his cage, patting them down 

 under sand or stones or rubbish of any kind, and 

 then again would disinter them, as quickly as 

 children do a doll which they have buried in their 

 play, with a genuine evptjKa look. The key of his 

 cage-door, if it were left open by chance, he would 

 whip out in a moment, and hide it in his very best 

 hiding-place, and visibly enjoy the trouble he gave 

 you in looking for it. He pecked a small hole into 

 the next compartment of the aviary, in which I 

 kept, sometimes an eagle owl, sometimes a kestrel 

 hawk ; and it was his supreme delight to filch away 

 a bit of food which the owl or the kestrel, in their 

 comparative stupidity, sometimes left near it. One 

 day, the kestrel, in a moment of forgetfulness, came 



