TRICKS OF RAVEN 173 



too near the hole. The raven caught him by the 

 leg ; and it was soon all over with him. 



One more appeal, as in the case of the owls, to 

 those who love, or who are capable of loving, what 

 is wild in nature, and I have done. Cicero tells us 

 that, after the wholesale plunderings of Verres in 

 Sicily, the duty of the guide who took you over a 

 town which had formerly abounded in the richest 

 treasures of Greek art, was no longer to show you 

 those treasures, but only mournfully to point to the 

 places in which they had once been. So is it with 

 the ravens. The " oldest inhabitant " of a village 

 here and there may still point, with pride and 

 pleasure, to a "raven clump" or a "raven tree"; but 

 where now are the ravens ? Sir Thomas Browne, 

 writing of ravens in Norfolk, two hundred years ago, 

 said, " Ravens are in great plenty near Norwich ; 

 and it is on this account that there are so few kites 

 there." And, as late as 1829, another observer in 

 Norfolk says, " This bird is found in woods in every 

 part of the county." * To-day, there are none at all. 

 They have followed the way of the kite. Mr 

 Hudson was told by the old head keeper on the 

 forest of Exmoor where ravens, surely, could do little 

 harm, that, a quarter of a century ago, he trapped 

 * Birds of Norfolk, by H. Stevenson, p. 257. 



