122 SINGING BIRDS. 
In ancient times, when divination made a part of religion, 
the Raven, though a bad prophet, was yet a very interesting 
bird; for the passion for prying into future events, even the 
most dark and sorrowful, is an original propensity of human 
nature. Accordingly, all the actions of this sombre bird, all 
the circumstances of its flight, and all the different intonations 
of its discordant voice, of which no less than sixty-four were 
remarked, had each of them an appropriate signification ; and 
there were never wanting impostors to procure this pretended 
intelligence, nor people simple enough to credit it. Some 
even went so far as to impose upon themselves, by devouring 
the heart and entrails of the disgusting Raven, in the strange 
hope of thus appropriating its supposed gift of prophecy. 
The Raven indeed not only possesses a great many natural 
inflections of voice corresponding to its various feelings, but it 
has also a talent for imitating the cries of other animals, and 
‘even mimicking language. According to Buffon, colas is a 
word which he pronounces with peculiar facility. Connecting 
circumstances with his wants, Scaliger heard one, which when 
hungry, learnt very distinctly to call upon Conrad the cook. 
The first of these words bears a great resemblance to one of 
the ordinary cries of this species, kowallah, kéwallah. Besides 
possessing in some measure the faculty of imitating human 
speech, they are at times capable of manifesting a durable 
attachment to their keeper, and become familiar about the 
house. 
The sense of smell, or rather that of sight, is very acute in 
the Raven, so that he discerns the carrion, on which he often 
feeds, at a great distance. Thucydides even attributes to him 
the sagacity of avoiding to feed on animals which had died of 
the plague. Pliny relates a singular piece of ingenuity em- 
ployed by this bird to quench his thirst: he had observed 
water near the bottom of a narrow-necked vase, to obtain 
which, he is said to have thrown in pebbles, one at a time, 
until the pile elevated the water within his reach. Nor does 
this trait, singular as it is, appear to be much more sagacious 
than that of carrying up nuts and shell-fish into the air, and 
