The late Mr Waterton having, some time ago, expressed
his opinion that ravens are gradually becoming extinct
in England, I offered the few following words about
my experience of these birds.
The raven in this story is a compound of two great
originals, of whom I was, at different times, the
proud possessor. The first was in the bloom of
his youth, when he was discovered in a modest retirement
in London, by a friend of mine, and given to me.
He had from the first, as Sir Hugh Evans says of Anne
Page, ‘good gifts’, which he improved by
study and attention in a most exemplary manner.
He slept in a stable—generally on horseback—and
so terrified a Newfoundland dog by his preternatural
sagacity, that he has been known, by the mere superiority
of his genius, to walk off unmolested with the dog’s
dinner, from before his face. He was rapidly
rising in acquirements and virtues, when, in an evil
hour, his stable was newly painted. He observed
the workmen closely, saw that they were careful of
the paint, and immediately burned to possess it.
On their going to dinner, he ate up all they had left
behind, consisting of a pound or two of white lead;
and this youthful indiscretion terminated in death.
While I was yet inconsolable for his loss, another
friend of mine in Yorkshire discovered an older and
more gifted raven at a village public-house, which
he prevailed upon the landlord to part with for a
consideration, and sent up to me. The first act
of this Sage, was, to administer to the effects of
his predecessor, by disinterring all the cheese and
halfpence he had buried in the garden—a
work of immense labour and research, to which he devoted
all the energies of his mind. When he had achieved
this task, he applied himself to the acquisition of
stable language, in which he soon became such an adept,
that he would perch outside my window and drive imaginary
horses with great skill, all day. Perhaps even
I never saw him at his best, for his former master
sent his duty with him, ’and if I wished the
bird to come out very strong, would I be so good as
to show him a drunken man’—which I
never did, having (unfortunately) none but sober people
at hand.
But I could hardly have respected him more, whatever
the stimulating influences of this sight might have
been. He had not the least respect, I am sorry
to say, for me in return, or for anybody but the cook;
to whom he was attached—but only, I fear,
as a Policeman might have been. Once, I met him
unexpectedly, about half-a-mile from my house, walking
down the middle of a public street, attended by a pretty
large crowd, and spontaneously exhibiting the whole
of his accomplishments. His gravity under those
trying circumstances, I can never forget, nor the
extraordinary gallantry with which, refusing to be
brought home, he defended himself behind a pump, until
overpowered by numbers. It may have been that
