During his tour in the Highlands with Dr. Johnson, Boswell writes a highly characteristic letter to David Garrick, and, describing their visit to Macbeth's Castle, says--"The situation of the old castle corresponds exactly to Shakspeare's description. While we were there to-day, it happened oddly that a raven perched upon one of the chimney tops and croaked. Then I, in my turn, repeated 'The raven himself,' &c." Now, if a raven in truth did so perch, all we can say is that it was a very curious place for a raven to be, or ravens, within a hundred years, must have very much changed their habits and nature. The explanation probably is that it was a tame raven, or a rook perhaps, or, likeliest of all, that it was a common jackdaw (Corvus monedula), a pert, impudent, and garrulous little gentleman in black--no bigger than a dovecot pigeon--that Mr. Boswell mistook (proh pudor!) for the grave, stately, and sagacious raven, who is as much bigger, and weightier, and wiser than his loquacious cousin the daw, as Samuel Johnson was bigger, and weightier, and wiser than his travelling companion, James Boswell. It is curious to meet with the following on the authority of no less renowned a personage than the valorous and puissant knight Don Quixote de la Mancha, the flower of chivalry. "Have you not read, sir," proceeds the knight, "the annals and histories of England, wherein are recorded the famous exploits of King Arthur, whom in our Castilian tongue we perpetually called King Artus, of whom there exists an ancient tradition, universally received over the whole kingdom of Great Britain, that he did not die, but that by magic art he was transformed into a raven, for which reason it cannot be proved that from that time to this any Englishman hath killed a raven."