CROWS. 65 



For, heretical as it' may sound, we have a strong feeling 

 of friendship for the dusky brotherhood. Perhaps it will 

 be suggested we have never suffered materially at their 

 hand, or we might be less indulgent. We do not allow 

 this, for we have felt, and bitterly resented at the time, 

 nearly every form of indignity to which the corvine species 

 can put either the sportsman, the naturalist, or the farmer. 

 And yefc there appears, in our mind, no legitimate need to 

 consign the whole race to that hideous barbarity "the 

 gamekeeper's tree," for when their numbers are moderate 

 the good they do, and the life infused into often desolate 

 regions, far outweigh their transgressions. At least, this is 

 the writer's experience, an experience, moreover, practical 

 and not altogether inextensive. 



The raven, for instance, the first of his kind in size, 

 strength, and cunning, if a hundred fables about him are to 

 be believed, has been my companion in many a lonely ramble 

 up Highland passes and over the seldom trodden wastes of 

 the wild western coast. Perhaps he does occasionally take 

 a juicy young grouse, when he fancies a change of diet 

 would be useful, and young hares or mountain rabbits 

 playing about far from cover undeniably suggest dinner to 

 him. But the harm done in this way is small, even when 

 all carefully recorded, and we could write off with very 

 little grudging in our game books each season a few brace of 

 birds or fur to his account. Then, there is the crow a bird 

 of evil omen all over the world, which, nevertheless, contrives 

 to live a happy and useful life from the verge of perpetual 

 ice along the Nova Zembla shores to the rim of the antarctic 

 circle. The oldest Yedas tell us how he fell from Paradise, 

 and the most ancient Cinghalese writings record his original 

 sin : " In wrath for their tale-bearing for had they not 

 carried abroad the secrets of the councils of the gods ? 

 Indra hurled them down through the hundred storeys of his 

 heaven;" and the Pratyasatka adds that "nothing can 

 improve a crow." In India he is the common enemy; kites 



F 



