THE RAVEN. 



273 



in civilised society, for its perpetual bickerings with 

 stranger dogs, and its incautious approach to the 

 heels of vicious horses, seldom fail, sooner or later, 

 to bring it to an untimely end. Still, I should be 

 the last man in the world to question the veracity of 

 remote antiquity, upon the mere strength of hasty 

 surmise. Those who are gone before us may 

 possibly have had better opportunities of ascertain- 

 ing the longevity of birds, than any which we now 

 possess. 



I never tire with reading the old fables in which 

 birds are introduced. Notwithstanding the impos- 

 sibilities and absurdities which are manifest in those 

 rich effusions of ancient wit and humour ; still I can 

 always find much in them to convince me, that the 

 writers of the olden times were no strangers to the 

 real habits of birds. Ovid, who flourished some 

 two thousand years ago, tells of a remarkably old 

 raven. It might indeed have been a companion for 

 Methusalem himself. When Medea, that wicked, 

 wanton, wandering witch, had made up her mind to 

 restore her aged father to the bloom of youth (which 

 was contrary to the order of the Fates), she boiled 

 a pot of herbs, and threw into it the bones and car- 

 cass of an owl, together with a few slices of wolf's 

 flesh, and the shell and inside of a fresh water- turtle. 

 To these she added the beak and head of a raven, 

 above nine hundred years old. 



" Quibus insuper addit 



Ora, caputque, novem cornicis saecula passce." 



Thrice she soused her father over head in water, 

 T 



