THE RAVEN 175 



Talking of ice reminds me to say that the severest 

 cold does not seem to hurt a Raven. He turns up un- 

 expectedly in the Polar solitudes, showing as brave a 

 disregard of the freezing air as the seals that lie along 

 the edges of the ice-floes. 



M'Clure, the Arctic navigator, tells us that even in cold 

 so intense that wine froze when placed only a yard away 

 from the fire, he saw the black wings of the Raven 

 flapping across the dreary solitudes. 



A traveller of our own day, Dr. Sven Hedin, tells how 

 when he was crossing Tibet, in his journeyings of 1906- 

 1908, "a lonely raven followed us for a month." But 

 even in that awful wind-swept, frost-bound wilderness, the 

 company of the bird was not welcome. For a Raven 

 comes for what he can get, and he is a bird of prey. " I 

 hate them," said Dr. Hedin, when lecturing before the 

 Royal Geographical Society on his return, "they only 

 wait in hope that somebody [in the caravan] will be left 

 behind. And sure enough, when a pony succumbed to 

 the bitter weather, the Raven at once picked out his 

 eyes." 



On Alaska Island the Ravens are said to be not only 

 plentiful but cheerful, friendly sort of birds, " talking and 

 croaking to each other all the day." And an Austrian 

 naturalist tell us how he has seen them sitting on the 

 housetops in the villages of Siberia. 



But Ravens that belong to more southerly latitudes 

 make a point of keeping away from man's dwelling, as 

 a rule. Now and then they are not so careful, and the 

 late Prince Rudolph, after shooting one in Southern 

 Hungary, says : "I was quite amazed at having killed, 

 close to a village and a high road, a bird which I had seen 

 on the loneliest cliffs of our Alps, in the desolate oak- 



