THE RAVEN. 79 



bird shifting its position rapidly from bough to bough, while the 

 Eaven, who held some food in his beak, satisfied himself on this 

 occasion with two or three swoops into the terrified crowd, and 

 having routed the mob, he approached the tree in which his nest 

 was placed. Before arriving there, however, he evidently became 

 aware of my presence, and dropping his prey, which proved to be 

 a rat, he ascended into the air to a great height in circular gyra- 

 tions, after the manner of a Falcon, where he was soon joined by 

 his consort ; and the two birds continued to soar over my head 

 while I remained there, uttering not only their usual hoarse croak, 

 but also an extraordinary sound, resembling the exclamation, 

 'Oh!' loudly and clearly ejaculated. At first I could hardly 

 persuade myself that it proceeded from the throat of either of 

 the Ravens, but my doubt was soon dispelled, for there was no 

 human being within sight ; and after carefully examining one of 

 the birds for some time with my glass, I observed that each note 

 was preceded by an opening of the beak, the distance, of course, 

 preventing sight and sound from being exactly simultaneous." 



We cannot follow Mr. KNOX verbatim through the whole of 

 his interesting narrative, but must give the remainder of it hi a 

 more condensed form. The following year, then, it appears, the 

 pair of birds changed their retreat from the beech grove to a 

 clump of Scotch firs in the same part, where their nest was in- 

 vaded by a truant school-boy, who bore away in his satchel the 

 four " squabs" which it contained. The watchful naturalist dis- 

 covered the loss of the parent birds, and after awhile traced out 

 the depredator, and got possession of the fledgelings in a half- 

 starved state ; these it was determined to bring up by hand ; and 

 the operation of clipping was already performed upon three of 

 them, when the idea occurred that the restoration of the remain- 

 ing perfect bird to the nest might have the effect of attracting 

 the old ones back to their now deserted, because empty home. 

 The experiment was tried and proved successful, and, in the words 

 of the pleased narrator, "the young bird was safely reared; the 

 Eavens have since brought up several families in the same nest." 



There is perhaps no bird more widely distributed over the sur- 

 face of the globe than the Eaven, which it has been well said by 

 the writer last quoted, " croaks as gravely as with ourselves on 

 the shores of the Black and Caspian seas, visits our Indian metro- 

 polis of Calcutta, forces its way over the guarded shores of Japan, 

 dwells among our busy descendants in America, ranges from 

 Mount Etna to the Iceland cold of Hecla, and braves the rigour 

 of the Arctic regions as far as Melville's Island." CAPTAIN Eoss 

 speaks of it as " one of the few birds capable of braving the severity 

 of an arctic winter ;" and Dr. EICHAKDSON says that " it fre- 

 quents the barren grounds of the most intense winter cold, its 



