We have just called the raven our "friend," nor are we at all ashamed so to designate a bird whom we have known long, and regarding whom, if other people speak nothing but evil, we at least can speak a great deal that is good. There is a well-known proverb to the effect that a certain potentate of sable hue is not so black as he is painted, nor is the raven. First of all, he is an apt scholar, and a bird generally of much sagacity, of long memory, and ready wit. It is on record that on one occasion when the Emperor Augustus was returning victorious from a battlefield, a tame raven that had received his lesson, and remembered it to the letter, alighted on the conqueror's chariot, and saluted him in these words--Ave Cæsar, Victor, Imperator! The Emperor was pleased, as he well might be, and ordered the raven a handsome pension for life. Bechstein, who probably knew more about the habits and economy of ravens, especially in their tame state, than any other ornithologist before his day or since, vouches for the facility with which they may be taught to speak, and for their sagacity and docility generally. He tells the following amusing story:--"A very clever raven was kept at a nobleman's residence in the district of Mannsfeldt. Among other things he could say, 'Well, who are you?' very strongly and distinctly. One day, as he was walking about among the grass in the garden, he observed a setter dog which remained near him, and kept constantly walking after him. Not liking to be thus watched and followed, the raven turned rapidly round and sternly exclaimed, 'Well, who are you?' The dog was alarmed at this, hung his tail, and ran hastily away, and not until he had gained a considerable distance did he turn round and howl." The raven, besides, is a thorough anti-Mormonite, and wouldn't live in Utah for the world. If he visits the polygamist colony at all, it is always under protest against the institutions of that delectable land, and to be ready to pick the bones of the first many-wived "elder" he may catch in articulo mortis. Rather should the raven be elected to a seat upon the bench of bishops, for he is ever careful to fulfil the apostolic injunction to be the husband but of one wife; and until accident or old age deprives him of her, he is the model and pattern of faithful and affectionate husbands, never violating his conjugal vows, not even to the extent of the most innocent of flirtations or the most Platonic of intimacies with a neighbouring raveness, even though she should be younger, and sleeker, and glossier than his own. The raven, in short, when he pairs, which he does at the earliest moment permitted by the laws of ravendom, pairs for life, and while his first choice is spared to him he will no more think of paying court to another, be her charms what they may, than he will of dying of hunger while there is a bone to pick, a tender lamb, or braxied sheep within a circuit of a hundred miles of his eyrie, in the