ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY. 



THE RAVEN. 



CoRvus Cor AX, Linn. 



PLATE CI. Male. 



Leaving to compilers the task of repeating the mass of fabulous and 

 unedifying matter that has been accumulated in the course of ages, re- 

 specting this and other remarkable species of birds, and arranging the 

 materials which I have obtained during years of laborious but gratifying 

 observation, I now resume my attempts to delineate the manners of the 

 feathered denizens of ovir American woods and plains. In treating of the 

 birds represented in the Second Volume of my Plates, as I have done with 

 respect to those of the First, I will confine myself to the particulars which 

 I have been able to gather in the course of a life chiefly spent in studying 

 the birds of my native land, where I have had abundant opportunities of 

 contemplating their manners, and of admiring the manifestations of the 

 glorious perfections of their Omnipotent Creator. 



There, amid the tall grass of the far-extended prairies of the West, in 

 the solemn forests of the North, on the heights of the midland mountains, 

 by the shores of the boundless ocean, and on the bosom of the vast lakes 

 and magnificent rivers, have I sought to search out the things which have 

 been hidden since the creation of this wondrous world, or seen only by 

 the naked Indian, who has, for unknown ages, dwelt in the gorgeous but 

 melancholy wilderness. Who is the stranger to my own dear country 

 that can form an adequate conception of the extent of its primeval woods, 

 — of the glory of those columnar trunks, that for centuries have waved in 

 the breeze, and resisted the shock of the tempest, — of the vast bays of 

 our Atlantic coasts, replenished by thousands of streams, differing in 



VOL. II. A 



