174 THE RAVEN 



fifty- two ravens in one year. What wonder that now 

 there is hardly one to be heard there? In Dorset, 

 besides those spots which I have known, in my 

 own time, to be tenanted and afterwards abandoned 

 by ravens, I have ascertained that, a generation or 

 two ago, they still built in Sherborne Park, in one of 

 the noble Scotch fir-trees planted there by Pope, and 

 in Bryanston Park, on Rempston Heath and on 

 Bloxworth Heath, in Came Park and on Galton 

 Common, at Milton Abbey and at Buckland 

 Newton, in the Coombe of Houghton and the 

 Coombe of Bingham's Melcombe, and perhaps 

 the most fitting place of all on the ruins of Corfe 

 Castle, just as they once built on Glastonbury Tor, 

 in the adjoining county of Somerset. What would 

 not Corfe Castle and Glastonbury Tor gain in 

 impressiveness, if there were ravens there still ? If 

 only they were to be strictly protected, as they 

 always have been at Badbury Rings, they might, 

 owing to that strong hereditary local attachment 

 which I have described, be, even now, drawn back 

 to some of their ancestral homes. 



The " Ravens woods," " Ravensburghs," 

 " Ravenscrofts," found, here and there, all over the 

 country, bear the indubitable testimony of language 

 to the large number of ravens which must in old 



