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 la^t 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 \vhich 
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 
pwas 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, 
E^above nine hundred years old. 
" Quibus insuper addit 
Ora, caputque, novem cornicis saecula passfe." 
Thrice she soused her father over head in water, 
T 
