378 



THE RAVEN. 



The raven of this article is so similar in many respects to our raven 

 of the large species, that described by Buffon simply under the name of 

 raven, of which he has given a bad figure in the coloured plates of his 

 work, No. 495, that I am very much inclined to believe it is merely a 

 variety of the same species. This raven being generally spread through 

 all the different parts of Europe, it would not be surprising if it was to 

 be met with at the Cape of Good Hope. I shall, however, remark 

 that in Africa this bird is rather larger, its bill stronger and more bent ; 

 but as in other respects all the characters are like those of our raven, 

 their habits are also exactly similar, and besides this, it ljas been re- 

 marked that, in several countries, these birds are either larger or smaller, 

 and their bill more or less bulged. We shall leave this raven of the 

 Cape by the side of our own, as a simple variety of the European species. 



I have seen these ravens most commonly in the mountains in the 

 environs of the bay of Saldanha. They live in small isolated flocks, 

 without mixing with the other species of the same genus. They scent 

 offal, feed on all kinds of carrion, earth-worms, snails, the land tortoise, 

 and even insects. When in flocks they sometimes attack young ante- 

 lopes and succeed in killing them. It is asserted that in Europe this 

 bird feeds on fruit and even corn. I have not observed that this takes 

 place in Africa, having only found in their stomach the different sorts 

 of food which I have mentioned, though I have killed several in the 

 cultivated property of a negro colonist, whose habitation was situated in 

 the mountains of the environs of the bay of Saldanha, and who reared a 

 great deal of corn. This man has assured me that these birds were not 

 birds of passage, and that he saw them all the year round in the same 

 cantons. I have also learned from him that they lay their eggs and rear 

 their young in the rocks ; that their eggs, four or five in number, are of 

 a dark green, spotted with brown. In the cantons of the colony where 

 this species of raven is found, the colonists distinguish it from the others 

 by the name of Groote-Kraai, or great crow. This name is also that 

 which the people have given to the same bird in all the different pro- 

 vinces of France where it is known. 



The general colour of this bird is of a deep black, glossy on the wings 

 and tail, without, however, possessing any shade either of green or purple, 

 as in the rook. The eyes are of a deep brown ; the feet, bill, and nails, 

 of a beautiful black. The tail is very little wedge-shaped, and the 

 folded wings spread nearly three-fourths beyond its length. The female 

 is a little smaller than the male, and is also of a browner black. 



I have never seen our small species of carrion crow, or that which 

 Buffon calls the Corbine or Corneille noire at the Cape ; neither is our 

 hooded crow found there. 



