unwittingly, in the vicinity of the precipice in a cleft of which the female raven was at the time brooding on her nest. At such a time the raven will boldly attack the passing eagle, and harass and annoy it until the eagle, pestered and teased by the assault, rather than in any way alarmed, with great good nature evacuates the territory which the raven claims as its own. The raven has from the earliest ages been accounted a bird of evil omen, and an object of superstitious dread and awe, and allusions to the bird in this connection are to be met with in the literature of most countries, the raven being as cosmopolitan as man himself. Its croak, so disagreeable, and dismal, and hoarse, and startling; its colour, a funereal black; its habitat, the lonely and demon-haunted mountain peaks, giddy precipices, and dreary solitudes; its lamb-slaying and carrion-eating propensities; its shy and suspicious manner, as if he knew that he had done evil and was apprehensive of well-merited punishment--all combine to render him in the first instance a noticeable and remarkable bird, and one sure to be selected for frequent reference in the days of bird divination, a superstition of which traces may probably be found in the early history of every country, and thus it would readily be raised to the "bad eminence" of a bird of evilest omen-- "The hateful messenger of heavy things, Of death and dolour telling." The Moor of Venice says-- "It comes o'er my memory, As doth the raven o'er the infected house, Boding to all." And you remember Macbeth, and cannot fail to catch the allusion-- "The raven himself is hoarse, That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements."