If rats gnaw the furniture of a room, there will be a death in the family ere long.--Grose. ⁂ The bucklers at Lanuvium being gnawed by rats, presaged ill fortune, and the battle of Marses, fought soon after, confirmed the superstition. The Romans said that to see a _white_ rat was a certain presage of good luck.--Pliny, _Natural History_, viii. 57. RAVEN. Ravens are ill-omened birds. The hoarse night raven, trompe of doleful dreere. Spenser. Ravens seen on the left hand side of a person bode impending evil. Sæpe sinistra cava prædixit ab ilice cornix. Virgil, _Ecl._, i. Ravens call up rain. Hark How the curst raven, with her harmless voice, Invokes the rain! Smart, _Hop Garden_, ii. (died 1770). When ravens forsake a wood, it prognosticates famine. This is because ravens bear the character of Saturn, the author of such calamities.--_Athenian Oracle_ (supplement, 476). Ravens forebode pestilence and death. Like the sad-presaging raven, that tolls The sick man’s passport in her hollow beak, And, in the shadow of the silent night, Doth shake contagion from her sable wing. Marlowe, _The Jew of Malta_ (1633). Ravens foster forsaken children. Some say that ravens foster forlorn children. (?) Shakespeare, _Titus Andronicus_, act ii. sc. 3 (1593). It is said that King Arthur is not dead, but is only changed into a raven, and will in due time resume his proper form and rule over his people gloriously. The raven was white till it turned tell-tale, and informed Apollo of the faithlessness of Corōnis. Apollo shot the nymph for her infidelity, but changed the plumage of the raven into inky blackness for his officious prating.--Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, ii. He [_Apollo_] blackened the raven o’er, And bid him prate in his white plumes no more. Addison’s _Translation of Ovid_, ii. If ravens gape against the sun, heat will follow; but if they busy themselves in preening or washing, there will be rain. REM´ORA. A fish called the remora can arrest a ship in full sail. A little fish that men call remora, Which stopped her course ... That wind nor tide could move her. Spenser, _Sonnets_ (1591). ROBIN. The red of a robin’s breast is produced by the blood of Jesus. While the “Man of Sorrows” was on His way to Calvary, a robin plucked a thorn from His temples, and a drop of blood, falling on the bird, turned its bosom red. Another legend is that the robin used to carry dew to refresh sinners parched in hell, and the scorching heat of the flames turned its feathers red.