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RAVEN. 
The Moor of Venice says : 
It comes o’er my memory. 
As doth the Raven o’er the infected house. 
Boding to all.”* 
The last quotation alludes to the supposed habit of this bird’s 
flying over those houses which contain the sick, whose dissolution 
is at hand, and thereby announced. Thus Marlowe, in the Jew of 
Malta, as cited by Malone : 
“ The sad presaging Raven tolls 
The sick man’s passport in her hollow beak. 
And in the shadow of the silent night 
Doth shake contagion from her sable wing.” 
But it is the province of philosophy to dispel those illusions 
which bewilder the mind, by pointing out the simple truths which 
Nature has been at no pains to conceal, but which the folly of 
mankind has shrouded in all the obscurity of mystery. 
The Raven is a general inhabitant of the United States, but 
is more common in the interior. On the lakes, and particularly in 
the neighbourhood of the Falls of the river Niagara, they are nu- 
merous ; and it is a remarkable fact, that where they so abound, 
the Common Crow, C. corone, seldom make its appearance ; being 
intimidated, it is conjectured, by the superior size and strength of 
the former, or by an antipathy which the two species manifest to- 
wards each other. This I had an opportunity of observing myself, 
in a journey during the months of August and September, along 
the lakes Erie and Ontario. The Ravens were seen every day, 
prowling about in search of the dead fish which the waves are 
Othello, act iv, scene 1. 
