most inaccessible cleft of yonder beetling precipice. We might now say something if we liked of the raven's usefulness in the general economy as a hard-working and indefatigable inspector of nuisances, and how putrid animal matter of every description disappears, as if by magic, wherever he is known and appreciated; but this is a utilitarian age, and as we hate utilitarianism, we are content merely to hint that the raven deserves special regard as a sanitary reformer. We prefer insisting on the fact that the raven is a gentleman of very ancient descent, being able, in the clearest manner, to trace his pedigree in unbroken line up to the days of "Captain" Noah himself, as Byron irreverently styles the patriarch. When any one in our day becomes distinguished and attracts our special regard, we instantly set to work to trace his descent, and although he himself can hardly tell who was his grandfather, we are never satisfied until we have, by hook and by crook, traced his ancestry to the Ragman Roll or the Norman Conquest, and, having thus ennobled him to our own entire satisfaction, we cease not to pet and praise him until he is dead, and then the newspapers swarm with obituary notices of the distinguished man who has just departed, and a monument, erected by public subscription, concludes the farce. The raven's ancestor was unquestionably with Noah in the ark, and although he has incurred some odium in connection with the assuaging of the waters, we confess we cannot well tell why, for all that the ancient, and beautiful, and simple narrative says of him is this: "And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth." On the point of ancestry, in short, there is no bird that has a better right to hold up his head than the raven. And just consider: wasn't Dickens' stuffed raven "Grip" sold the other day for a hundred and twenty guineas! although if his portrait in the Graphic is to be depended on, he never was a handsome specimen of the family, or if he was, then the man who stuffed and "set him up" should have received a flogging for his pains. Should the reader wish to know more about our friend Corvus corax, we can confidently recommend him to make the acquaintance, the intimate acquaintance if he can, of "The Raven" to be met with in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, the most weird and wonderful raven that has ever yet appeared in song or story. CHAPTER XX. Along the Shore after Birds--An Otter in pursuit of a Fish--Tame Otter at Bridge of Tilt: Employed in Fishing--His hatred of all sorts of Birds--"The Otter and Fox," a translation from the Gaelic.