THE CARRION CROW. 
307 
Chateaubriand introduces it at the latter place, in his description 
of sunrise, as seen from the Acropolis.* 
Mr. Waterton, in his Essays on Natural History, gives a 
highly interesting account of the raven, but, to his great grief, this 
bird has not for many years been seen about Walton Hall. Sir 
Wm. Jardine, with an accurately observant eye, points out (in his 
British Birds) the favourite haunts of the raven. Mr. Macgillivray 
treats very fully of its habits, and gives much desirable informa- 
tion (vol. i.); as Audubon likewise does, from personal observation 
in America. The raven is honoured with a place in those de- 
lightful articles of Blackwood's Magazine for 1826, entitled ‘A. 
Glance over Selby's Ornithology,' in which the keen observer of 
the habits of birds is evident, through the wit and imagination 
investing the whole matter. 
THE CARRION CROW. 
Corvus cor one, Linn. 
Though inhabiting this island, is much less common 
than in England. 
It is not equally diffused over Great Britain, being, as we are 
informed, “ very uncommon in the northern and middle parts of 
Scotland, but in the southern division of that country and in 
England, much more numerous than the raven or the hooded 
crow."t When on a visit at Jardine Hall, Dumfries-shire, in 
October, 1845, I particularly remarked, that the carrion crow took 
the place which the hooded or grey crow occupies in the north of 
Ireland : — at Rammerscales, in the same neighbourhood, not less 
than a dozen were seen congregated one evening at roosting time. 
Eor its comparative rarity in Ireland, I cannot account. The 
want of old trees at the present time might be imagined one 
reason, but their scarcity cannot be the cause, as it appears from 
the following extract, that at a period when there was much old 
wood in the country, the bird was believed not to be found here. 
* Itiueraire de Paris a Jerusalem. 
x 2 
Macgillivray, vol. i. p. 519. 
