Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/333

Rh of parts adapted for entering that element. I saw one pounce on a leveret, and bear it in its claws from the side of its mother, who ran a good way in a line below the course taken by the crow. Its wily life seems spent in threading along the bottoms of the glens, and tracing up their various adjuncts, looking intently and carefully into every ravine seeking for sick or diseased animals, it matters not whether they be wild or tame.

They build in trees, selecting in preference an old disbranched fir, an old thorn or birch, remnants of the ancient Caledonian forests, and situated either in deep glens or on the open hill-side. But the tree and the situation alike fail in giving security to the young, for it is very seldom that the shepherd fails to discover them. The nest is constructed of the same materials, and has the same form as the raven's. They feed their young with all kinds of animal substances they can purloin from the farm-house, or collect from the face of Nature; among the rest the eggs of every wild fowl that comes to the hill to breed, and if the nests have remained undiscovered, until the period of incubation has passed, still the young are as acceptable as the eggs, or even more so, for they are carried alive to the nest, in order that their own young may learn to murder, lacerate and destroy; and I really think, if grouse are plentiful in the vicinity, that one pair of crows, what with stealing the eggs and carrying off the young, will in a season destroy more of these birds than the keenest sportsman that takes to the muirs. Whatever the young reject as uneatable or indigestible—as bones, hair, egg-shells, &c.—the old crows instinctively carry to a considerable distance, but all to one spot, generally a little knoll. It is very curious to light by chance on one of these repositories of spoil, consisting of mice-down and mice-heads, lambs' wool, skin and bones, the egg-shells of every wild fowl that frequents our deserts, and a still larger quantity of egg-shells of the domestic hen and of the corn-crow [or rook]. In this country these last are gregarious, and feed only on corn or fruit, while the crow lives in pairs and is decidedly carnivorous.

Additional Note on the Raven. Very good naturalists inform us that the raven exists in large flocks, in those almost interminable regions which lie between the sources of the Mackenzie and Missouri rivers,—and that when the wandering tribes, who ramble through those pathless deserts, notice a flock of ravens hovering or wheeling above a certain space, it is a sure indication that an encampment of their countrymen, well stored with animal food, occupies the ground