RAVEN. | NATURAL HISTORY. ey 
Rats, the Physicians cure the falling-off of the hair. And 
if their urine do fall upon the bare place of a man, it 
maketh the flesh rot unto the bones, neither will it suffer 
any scar to be made upon the bones, 
Topsell, ““Four-footed Beasts,” pp. 403-4. 
Ir is found by observation that Rats and Dormice will 
forsake old and ruinous houses, three months before they 
fall; for they perceive by an instinct of nature, that the joints 
and fastening together of the posts and timber of the houses, 
by little and little will be loosed, and so thereby. that all 
will fall to the ground. 
Lupton, “ Notable Things,” bk. ii. § 87. 
Ir is said that no Rats have ever been seen in this town 
| Hatfield, Yorkshire]. Camden, “Britannia,” col. 849. 
V. Mouse, Water-rat, Island. 
Ratsbane. 
ii. Kine Henry IV., i. 2, 48. 
[The following quotation from Holland’s Pliny, bk. xxii, 
ch. xviii. seems appropriate: 
“If there be water and oil mingled to the juice of 
Chameleon [carline Thistle], it draweth rats and mice to it, 
but it is their bane, unless presently they drink water.” 
But probably Shakespeare. used the word as simply mean- 
ing any poison. Florio gives “Ratsbane” as an equivalent 
for corrosive sublimate and for arsensic.] 
Raven. 
Tue Raven beholdeth the mouth of her birds when they 
yawn. But she giveth them no meat ere she know and 
see the likeness of her own blackness, and of her own 
colour and feathers; and when they begin to wax black, 
then afterward she feedeth them with all her might and 
strength. Ravens’ birds be fed with dew of heaven all 
the time that they have no black feathers. And is a 
crying fowl, and hath diverse sound and voice; for among 
fowls only the Raven hath four and sixty changings of 
voice. And is a guileful bird, and taketh away things 
thievishly, and layeth and hideth them in privy places. 
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