THE RAVEN’S NEST 79 
proached me for my senile slowness. We stopped to 
rest at the foot, and I was just telling him that the 
Cornishmen hate the raven because to their ears he 
always cries “Corpse, corpse!”’ when suddenly the 
bird itself came back again. It flew across the valley 
and alighted on a tree-top by the opposite cliff, 
looking like a monster crow, being about one-third 
longer. One might mistake a crow for a raven, 
but never a raven for a crow. If there be any doubt 
about the bird, it is always safe to set it down asa 
crow. 
The flight of the raven, which consisted of two 
flaps and a soar, and its long tail resembling that of 
an enormous grackle, were its most evident field- 
marks. 
For long we sat and watched the wary birds, until, 
chilled through by the driving rain, we started to 
cover the ten miles that lay between us and the 
house of Squire McMahon, a mountain friend of 
the Collector, where we planned to pass the night. 
On the way the Collector told me that he saw his 
first raven while wandering through the mountains 
in the spring of 1909, and how he trailed and hunted 
and watched until, in 1910, he found the first nest. 
Since then he had found twelve. His system was a 
simple one. Selecting from a gazetteer a list of moun- 
tain villages with wild names, such as Bear Creek, 
Paddy’s Mountain, and Panther Run, he would 
write to the postmasters for the names of noted hunt- 
ers and woodsmen. From them he would secure 
more or less accurate information about the haunts 
