THE RAVEN. 
125 
ture and temperature like ours is peculiarly favorable 
for the production of insect food, which would in some 
seasons be particularly injurious, were we not visited 
by such numbers of active little friends to consume it. 
The raven (corvus corax) does not build with us. A 
pair indeed attempted to raise a brood in our wych-elm; 
but they love retirement and quiet, and were soon 
scared away, and made no second trial. Ravens visit 
us, however, frequently, and always during the lambing 
season, watching for any weak and deserted creature, 
which, when perceived, is instantly deprived of its eyes ; 
but they make no long stay in our pastures. They 
abide nowhere in fact, but move from place to place, 
where food may chance to be found. Should an animal 
die, or a limb of fresh carrion be on the hooks in the 
tree, the hoarse croak of the raven is sure immediately 
to be heard, calling his congeners to the banquet. We 
see it daily in its progress of inspection, or high in the 
air on a transit to other regions, hastening, we conjec- 
ture, to some distant prey. With the exception of the 
snipe, no bird seems more universally spread over the 
surface of our globe than the raven, inhabiting every 
zone, the hot, the temperate, the severe — feeding upon, 
and removing noxious substances from the earth, of 
which it obtains intimation by means of a faculty we 
have little conception of. Sight it cannot be ; and we 
know not of any fetor escaping from an animal pre- 
vious to putrescence, so subtile as to call these scaven- 
gers of nature from the extremity of one county to that 
of another ; for it is manifest, from the height which 
they preserve in their flight, and the haste they are 
making, that their departure has been from some far 
distant station, having a remote and urgent object in 
contemplation. 
In England the raven does not seem to abound ; but 
it is most common on the shores of harbors, or near 
great rivers, where animal substances are more fre- 
quently to be met with than in inland places. In 
Greenland, and Iceland, where putrescent fishy sub- 
stances abound, they appear to be almost domesticated. 
Horace calls the raven “ annosa cornix and in a tame 
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