The phrase pasce corvos, 'be food for the ravens', among the Romans, like ἴθι ἐς κόρακας, ' go to the ravens, or βάλλ' ἐς κόρακας, ' fing him to the ravens,' among the Greeks, were curses imprecating utter disgrace and ruin. They involved death, mutilation by a bird of evil omen, want of burial. And want of burial carried with it disagreeable consequences in the other world. Charon would not ferry the soul over the Styx.

But what the raven loves most of all is carrion, and thereby, like the vulture in the desert, or like the kite in medieval cities, or the adjutant in Eastern cities now, he, no doubt, plays his appointed part in creation. The carcase of any animal lying on hill or valley, or anything and everything thrown up by the tide, from a mollusc or a shellfish to a shark or a whale, he claims as his own. A shellfish, when it proves too hard a nut for him to crack with his bill, he has been seen to carry high in air and drop upon the rocks. The islands round the west and north of Scotland still afford one of the best fields for the observation of the raven when he is at work. And Macgillivray, who, some sixty years ago, used to watch them with a telescope from huts he had put up for the purpose, has given a graphic description of their modus operandi, the gist of which I reproduce.

When a raven discovers a dead sheep he always first alights at a considerable distance from it, looks carefully around, and utters a low croak. He then advances nearer, in his queer sidelong fashion, eyes his prey wistfully, and then, plucking up his courage, leaps upon him and makes a closer examination. Discovering no cause of alarm-no suspicion, that is, of a trap or poison-he gives a louder croak, pecks out an eye and part of the tongue, and devours them. By this time, another raven, and another, and another will have arrived, when they dig out together the intestines and continue to feed on the carcase till they are sated or disturbed. Sometimes a greater black-backed gull, a skua, a fox, or even a dog, will have a look in' and be allowed to join in the feast. Feris convivialis, 'he will banquet with wild beasts,' says Linnæus tersely of the raven. He was probably describing what he had himself often seen in Sweden; and one of the names by which the raven or corbie crow is known in the Highlands, biadhtach,' is said to have much the same meaning.1 If a whale be thrown ashore, the good news spreads, no one quite knows how, along

Island and promontory, creek and bay,

throughout the Hebrides. The raven is, in no sense of the word, gregarious; on the contrary, he has a passion for solitude. He will tolerate no rival, not even his own offspring, in the neighbourhood of his ancestral throne. He drives them ruthlessly away, as soon as they are able to shift for themselves. But, on an occasion like this, his voracity overpowers his wish to be alone. Other ravens drop in

' Macgillivray's British Birds, i. 498 seq.

by twos and threes till they have been counted by hundreds. There they take up their abode for weeks and even months, till the huge carcase has been picked clean. On one occasion, the inhabitants of a small island feared that the prolonged stay of the ravens might end in an attack on the barley crop which was soon to ripen and to supply their illicit whisky stills. Something must be done. A crafty cragsman managed to capture some of the ravens on the ledge on which they roosted at night, heavy with sleep and food. He plucked off all their feathers, except those of their wings and tails, and turned them adrift in the morning. The other ravens, either failing, with all their acuteness, to recognise their uncanny piebald comrades, or reading in them their own future fate, left the island, not to return.

I have said that the raven is a very solitary bird, except when the cry of carrion afield' on a colossal scale, causes him to put up for a time with the society of his kind. But two exceptions to the rule, one of which came under my brother's, the other under my own notice, are worth recording. Colonel Walter Marriott Smith, R.A., tells me that in winter the raven becomes gregarious on the margin of the hills and plains in Northern India.

I have seen them by hundreds on a vacated barrack near Peshawur, during the last Afghan war. I have also watched one of them, when no other human being was visible, regularly stationing himself opposite to the fowls' big wire enclosure at Peshawur, and setting to work to systematically imitate their sounds, and ridiculing them with an air of contemptuous superiority.

My own experience was at Athens, in January 1898. The green slopes of Lycabettus, the hill outside the city which so dwarfs the Acropolis and the Areopagus within it, were dotted with ravens, walking about in groups of threes or fours, and, anon, congregating together, to the number of about seventy. They were not there for purposes of carrion-there was none about. It was a more serious business. No clerical convocation could have looked more sober and sedate, nor, so far as appearances went, could have more weighty matters to discuss. What were they there for? My theory is that the convocation consisted of the young birds of the previous year which had recently been sent about their business by their parents, and, by a curious coincidence, had met from all the adjoining parts of Greece at the metropolis, and were now about to take the most farreaching step in their career. They were about to choose a mate, not for a year, or term of years, but for a lifetime; and a raven, it is to be remembered to his credit, is never false to his choice.

One other interesting experience of a raven abroad should be mentioned here. I was on a visit to the site of Carthage and went out to view the Roman aqueduct, several arches of which, nearly as high as those of the Pont du Gard, still march across a remote plain in stately procession. On the top of one of these a big owl had built her

nest; on the other side of it, a raven had built hers; a curious mixture of associations, archæological and religious, the bird of Pallas and the bird of Odin nestling together in amity, on a building reared by the Roman worshippers of Jupiter and Juno, and supplying the wants of the descendants of the Phoenicians, who still clung to their ancestral worship of Baal and of Ashtaroth.

The bill of the raven is a formidable weapon, strong, stout, sharp at the edges, curved towards the tip. It is his one weapon of offence, but it answers the purpose of two or three. Like the dirk of the Highlanders, among whom he is still so often found, it is equally available as a dagger or as a carving knife. It can also be used as a pair of pincers. It can kill a rat at one blow, crush its head into pulp with one squeeze, and then, with its powerful pull, can tear the muscles asunder, or strip off the flesh in small morsels from the bones. It can drive its beak right through the spines of a hedgehog and deal it a death-blow. It is said that it will never attack a man. If this be true, it is, I think, not so much from any defect of courage as from his keen intellectual perception of what will pay and what will not. A raven, and still more a pair of them, will beat off and mob the formidable skua gull, the Iceland falcon, the sea or the golden eagle itself. It will even engage in a not wholly unequal combat, on the ground, with the long-necked heron, one direct blow of whose spear-like beak would kill him on the spot.

Three striking compliments paid by the Romans, the masters of the art of war, to the strength and formidable nature of the raven's beak may be mentioned here.

First, it was nothing but the help, as the story goes, of a raven which, perching on the helmet of the Roman champion, Valerius, and striking with beak and wings against the gigantic Gaul opposed to him, secured the victory for Rome and gave to Valerius, in consequence, his own name of Corvus, which he bore as a name of honour ever afterwards.

Secondly, it was nothing but the spike fixed at the end of the mast and drawbridge invented by Duillius, in the first Punic war, and called, from its resemblance to a raven's beak, the Corvus or Corax, which, when it fell on the deck of a Carthaginian vessel, pinned it to itself in fatal embrace, and so, changing the sea into a land battle, gave to Rome her first naval victory over the masters of the sea.

And, once more, the same terrible name of destiny was given to the grappling-hook or engine which now tore down stones from the walls of a besieged city, and, now, again, when planted on the walls of the besieged, would, by a sudden swing, whip up one of the besiegers from the ground and fling him far into the city.

R. BOSWORTH SMITH.

(To be concluded)

AN AGRICULTURAL PARCEL POST

THE object of the writer of this article is not so much to entertain the reader as to attempt to show how the income of the United Kingdom may be immediately increased by at least 60 millions sterling, distributed among a class of men who are admitted to be the backbone of the community, but whose fate it seems to be to suffer from the prosperity of their fellows. There is but one class which can be thus described-the agricultural. There is but one remedy suggested for its misfortunes-an Agricultural Parcel Post.

Not that the Post Office can do all that is required. The official Hercules will certainly expect the depressed cultivator to put a shoulder to the wheel. The Postmaster-General is nowise responsible for the enterprise of Transatlantic farmers or the cutting of Transatlantic freights. So long as the British farmer acts on the heory that his land will produce only one thing, which he cannot sell at a profit, nobody, not even Hercules, can help him. For, as against stupidity, 'the gods themselves contend in vain.' But if he will grow that which is highly profitable, and which the Post Office alone (without injury to its revenue) can bring to market, then it is clearly the duty of the Post Office to place its machinery at his service. It is worth while to examine with an impartial mind the facts and arguments for and against postal intervention.

WHAT WE ARE LOSING-IN ACRES

There are in the United Kingdom 77,677,959 acres, of which 29,917,374 acres are uncultivated. Of the uncultivated portion, 1,225,000 acres were cultivated eleven years ago, when I brought the matter before Mr. Raikes; 806,872 have been laid down in pasture, while 418,473 have become primeval desert.

WHAT WE ARE LOSING-IN MEN

While our fields have been thus abandoned to weeds, those who tilled them have emigrated to lands where their services are valued. In the last ten years 1,603,523 persons have left our

shores. Whole villages are deserted as in the time of plague; and all we get in return for our country is the barren title, Officina Gentium.

IN MONEY

It may be urged that the emigrants are not wanted here, nor the abandoned acres either. A most eloquent protest against this assertion is furnished by the following return of dairy and garden produce imported last year (on which The Times remarks:- Every article in it is easily producible at home'):

It appears that we consume yearly 60,000,000l. worth of dairy and similar garden produce not raised on our own soil.

Could it be raised here? High authorities like Mr. Chaplin, Mr. Hanbury, and Mr. C. S. Read, say there is no difficulty. Experts tell us that British soil is as rich as any in the salts and fertilising elements required. Public opinion, built up of individual experiences, pronounces British eggs, cheese, butter, and apples to possess unapproachable flavour. Common-sense teaches us that where pigs or fowls or cows are fattened on one farm, they may be fattened on a neighbouring farm, lying on the same strata and having similar physical conditions. Yet we continue to import more and more agricultural produce and to export more and more agricultural labourers.

NO LINK BETWEEN GROWER AND BUYER

The sterilising influence, the fatal objection, is the want of some means of getting the produce in question quickly and cheaply to the market. A man farming a thousand acres contracts with dealers in town, and delivers his produce daily, from his own van or cart, at the nearest railway station. But the tens of thousands who occupy from one to twenty acres own no vans, and, in order to secure lower rent, they live far away from the railway. And the situation of a farm is