THE RAVEN. 
721 
The Carrion and Hooded Crows imitate the Raven to the 
best of their ability; i. e. they rob and plunder in propor¬ 
tion to their strength. In addition to the aforesaid 
misdeeds, it may be added that the entire family of Crows 
shows a great and particular predilection for the glittering 
mammon of this world,—gold rings, silver spoons, and 
other bright objects, are most eagerly seized; I may indeed 
say that they have a veritable passion for such booty, which 
propensity has at divers times caused knights, bishops, 
serf-owners, and other cruelly-disposed individuals, to 
indulge freely in the vices of jealousy, mistrust, false 
condemnation, vengeance, and murder, and lastly led to 
the bitterest remorse and perdition: so saith legend and 
story. This, however, closes the long list of depreda¬ 
tions committed by the black brotherhood; for the 
circumstances which led to their feasting on human 
corpses left exposed on the gibbet or the wheel, are out 
of their control, so that in this case no sin can be laid 
to their charge, though the fact speaks in condemnation 
of the hideous barbarity of an age which denied the 
corpse of a criminal, condemned by the laws of the land, 
a Christian burial. When man can regard the human body 
in the light of carrion, one cannot really expect the 
Haven to think and act in a more civilized manner! 
We will now, however, turn our attention to the 
virtues of the Crow family, as a set-off against the long 
row of misdeeds we have so faithfully chronicled. All 
members of the black tribe are, without exception, 
excessively useful to the farmer. The Rook, Chough, 
and the Jackdaw, may be said to cause us no mischief 
whatsoever,—on the contrary, they do nothing but good 
on the land; so that if we look upon the misdeeds of 
the Carrion and Hooded Crows as counterbalanced by 
