RAVEN. 
203 
considered as holding a relation to the birds of prey, feed- 
ing not only on carrion, but, occasionally seizing on 
weakly lambs, young hares, or rabbits, and seems indeed 
to give a preference to animal food ; but, at the same time, 
he is able to live on all kinds of fruits and grain, as well 
as insects, earth-worms, even dead fish, and in addition 
to all, is particularly fond of eggs, so that no animal 
seems more truly omnivorous than the Raven. 
If we take into consideration his indiscriminating 
voracity, sombre livery, discordant croaking cry, with 
his ignoble, wild, and funereal aspect, we need not 
be surprised, that in times of ignorance and error, he 
should have been so generally regarded as an object of 
disgust and fear. He stood preeminent in the list of 
sinister birds, or those whose only premonition was the 
announcing of misfortunes ; and, strange to tell, there are 
many people yet in Europe, even in this enlightened age, 
who tremble and become uneasy at the sound of his 
harmless croaking. According to Adair, the southern 
aborigines also invoke the Raven for those who are sick, 
mimicking his voice ; and the natives of the Missouri, as- 
suming black as their emblem of war, decorate them- 
selves, on those occasions, with the plumes of this dark 
bird. But all the knowledge of the future, or interest in 
destiny, possessed by the Raven, like that of other inhab- 
itants of the air, is bounded by an instinctive feeling of 
the changes which are about to happen in the atmosphere, 
and which he has the faculty of announcing by certain 
cries and actions produced by these external impressions. 
In the southern provinces of Sweden, as Linnaeus re- 
marks, when the sky is serene, the Raven flies very high, 
and utters a hollow sound, like the word dong , which is 
heard to a great distance. Sometimes he has been seen 
in the midst of a thunder storm, with the electric fire 
