The Raven. 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
(206) 
Tke Raven. 
By “LICHEN GREY.” 
The Corby, up in his lonely cliff, is crouping, in 
sorrow, his lane; 
For his mate is lying stark an’ stiff, doon-by, at 
the welter-gate stane ; 
But brawly he kens that he manna greet, fu’ lang 
o’er his sorrowfu’ fate, 
But maun get a new wife te tak’ her seat on the 
eggs, or it’s ower late : 
An’ the morrow’s morn, ere peep o’ licht, te the 
distant hills he’ll ha’ flown, 
An’ be back at his nest afore the nicht, wi’ anither 
te ca’ his own. 
Corby is a name commonly applied 
to the Raven in North Britain, though 
elsewhere, perhaps, more generally 
bestowed upon the Crow; and the weird 
croaking, which constitutes his ordinary 
cry, can scarcely be expressed better 
than as crouping. The picture drawn in 
the lines above quoted, is in every respect 
true to nature, for it is marvellous how 
soon a bird, which has been so un¬ 
fortunate as to lose its mate, will find 
another to help carry on the all im¬ 
portant duties of housekeeping; and it 
is scarcely less interesting to note the 
fact that the newcomer is always ready 
to take up the work at the point at which 
it was relinquished by his or her pre¬ 
decessor. I have satisfied myself, by 
close observation on many occasions, 
that a new hen will incubate eggs, which 
she finds in the nest on her first intro¬ 
duction to it, as assiduously as though 
they had been her own; and the atten¬ 
tion of step-parents of either sex, to 
adopted young ones, is not excelled even 
by the parent itself. Whence the new 
partners come, in such cases of emer¬ 
gency, must always strike us as some¬ 
thing of a puzzle, but it goes to prove 
that there are always a certain number of 
non-breeding birds about, and that their 
haunts are known to the settled house¬ 
holders in the avine world. 
His Note not Unpleasing. 
The vocal powers of the Raven are 
very considerable, and although the male 
does not “ sing ” to his mate, in the 
usually accepted sense of that term, he 
has a variety of metallic, and not un¬ 
pleasing notes, to which he gives vent 
at the approach of spring. In captivity 
a Raven may be easily taught to “ talk,” 
and to imitate the human voice very 
closely. In nature there is, perhaps, no 
bird whose notes, and the expressive in¬ 
flections of whose voice, are more cal¬ 
culated to impress us with the convic¬ 
tion that birds are able to talk to one 
another. Nay! a tame Raven would 
sometimes even appear capable of hold¬ 
ing converse with man himself, not to 
mention the lower animals. He will 
cackle with the poultry, or bark with the 
dog, and he will so closely imitate the 
voice of the latter’s master that poor 
Carlo may be sent home in fancied dis¬ 
grace, or despatched on fruitless errands, 
and it would almost seem from the apti¬ 
tude with which they are used, as if the 
bird understood the full meaning of the 
words and expressions he had picked up. 
Evidently a Good Old Tory. 
One rather amusing instance of the 
reasoning faculties of a Raven occurred 
during the late Mr. Gladstone’s Mid- 
Lothian campaign. Political feeling 
was at its height, and a meeting, which 
was being held under Liberal auspices in 
a village assembly room, was nearly 
broken up in the excitement following 
upon a sepulchral voice which shouted, 
“ Damn old Gladstone,” in the middle 
of the chairman’s speech! Order was 
scarcely restored even when it was dis- 
