80 
CROW. 
manners, to recommend him ; on the contrary, he is branded 
as a thief and a plunderer — a kind of black-coated vagabond, 
who hovers over the fields of the industrious, fattening on their 
labours, and, by his voracity, often blasting their expectations. 
Hated as he is by the farmer, watched and persecuted by 
almost every bearer of a gun, who all triumph in his destruction, 
had not Heaven bestowed on him intelligence and sagacity 
far beyond common, there is reason to believe that the whole 
tribe (in these parts at least) would long ago have ceased to 
exist. 
The Crow is a constant attendant on agriculture, and a 
general inhabitant of the cultivated parts of North America. 
In the interior of the forest he is more rare, unless during the 
season of breeding. He is particularly attached to low flat 
corn countries, lying in the neighbourhood of the sea, or of 
large rivers ; and more numerous in the northern than southern 
states, where Vultures abound, with whom the Crows are 
unable to contend. A strong antipathy, it is also said,’ prevails 
between the Crow and the Raven, insomuch, that where the 
latter is numerous, the former rarely resides. Many of the 
first settlers of the Gennesee country have informed me, that, 
for a long time, Ravens were numerous with them, but no 
Crows ; and even now the latter are seldom observed in that 
country. In travelling from Nashville to Natchez, a distance 
of four hundred and seventy miles, I saw few or no Crows, but 
Ravens frequently, and vultures in great numbers. 
The usual breeding time of the Crow, in Pennsylvania, is 
in March, April, and May, during which season they are dis- 
persed over the woods in pairs, and roost in the neighbourhood 
though some allowance might be made for the diversity of habit in the two 
countries, I do not see in Avhat manner the cry of the bird should be so 
distinctly affected as to be remarked by nearly all authors who have men- 
tioned them. 
Burns’s line in the Cottar’s Saturday Night alludes certainly to the 
common Rook, and he, I am sure, knew the difference between a Crow and a 
Corbie Ed. 
3 
