Birds. 3025 



ply the place of them all, and a handsome bird he is. In some parts 

 of the country, and especially in the neighbourhood of Christiania, in 

 lieu of the light smoke-gray, which is the usual colour of their backs 

 and under surface, a light rose-coloured tint pervaded these parts: I 

 have seen a large flock with this rosy colour, and when the sun has 

 happened to shine on their backs, the delicate pink has been very 

 perceptible and beautiful, though I can assure your readers that this 

 effect is not to be ascribed altogether to the agency of pofoddxTuXos 'Hug, 

 for even on a cloudy day the same tint remained. 



The Raven (Corvus cor ax). The high table-land, which, on reach- 

 ing the plateau of a mountain, you have to cross, and which frequently 

 extends for many miles, the very acme of all that is wild, solitary and 

 desolate, comprises the famous Norwegian fjeld : too cold and inhos- 

 pitable for habitation, and too barren for cultivation, the fjeld only 

 serves, in its best and most fertile parts, to give a scanty subsistence to 

 the few cows which the farmer sends there during the summer months. 

 These fjelds present every variety of savage wildness ; some are 

 nearly flat, others undulating ; others again exceedingly steep, and 

 difficult to traverse ; some are covered with heather, some with lichen 

 and reindeer-moss ; some, devoid of any vegetation, are mere wilder- 

 nesses of dark rock, or enormous beds of snow which never melts. I 

 think I never crossed one of these fjelds without seeing a raven 

 perched on a rock, overlooking his wild domain, and croaking out his 

 welcome, or, perhaps, his malediction, and then, as you draw nearer, 

 flying heavily and surlily away ; for the raven is a bird of great dignity, 

 and will not brook familiarity or too great intimacy. Very often, on 

 winding round a rock, we would come suddenly upon five or six of these 

 birds, probably the whole family, sitting quietly together, not dreaming 

 of an intruder on their privacy ; and then what a hubbub they made, 

 and what a bustle they were in, to get away ; and what a rustling of huge 

 black wings, and what a croaking of hoarse angry voices, as they rushed 

 away helter-skelter, and never stopped till they had placed the greater 

 part of an English mile between us, when we could see them settle 

 together again on a projecting rock, to recover their fright, and exa- 

 mine us who where the causes of it. I have often in England ad- 

 mired the caution and great wariness of the raven, and having lived 

 some years near the Cheddar Cliffs, where some were always to be 

 seen, had frequent opportunities of remarking their wide-awake pro- 

 pensities, and have always thought it as unlikely to e catch a raven 

 asleep ' as a weasel : but in these desolate Norwegian fjelds, where a 

 human being is so seldom seen, not even a raven thinks it worth while 

 IX. H 



