. Animal Life and the World of Nature; A magazine of Natural History. ven has an intelligence almost uncanny in a bird; and a savage spirit too, and power; and a deep human-like voice; and a very long life. These qualities affect the mind and have been the cause of the ravens strange reputation in?former ages—the idea that:he was something more than a bird; a messenger of doom, an evil spirit, or the spirit of some great dead naan revisiting the scenes of his earthly career., Common all over the country down to the early years of the ninteenth cen-tury, he has now been pretty well exterminated
. Animal Life and the World of Nature; A magazine of Natural History. ven has an intelligence almost uncanny in a bird; and a savage spirit too, and power; and a deep human-like voice; and a very long life. These qualities affect the mind and have been the cause of the ravens strange reputation in?former ages—the idea that:he was something more than a bird; a messenger of doom, an evil spirit, or the spirit of some great dead naan revisiting the scenes of his earthly career., Common all over the country down to the early years of the ninteenth cen-tury, he has now been pretty well exterminated as an inland bird. On the: iron-bound coasts where his\ eggs are comparatively safe,:and in a few wild moun-tainous spots in the interior, he still exists. But it does not seem long since he was lost, for his memory still lives: raven trees are common all over the country —trees in which the vanished birds built their big nests and reared their young each p„„,„ „^ „. p liegents Pari; year. Tales of last ravens a HAiipsmKE 14 The Last Hampshire Ravens 15 are also told in numberless places all overthe countiy. Everyone who knovs^s theSelborne Letters will remember the pathetic-history of the last ravens in his neigh-bourhood told by Gilbert White. That isa long time back, and it is known thatravens continued to breed in Hampshirefor over a century after Whites am here speaking of the inland-hreedingbirds; for up till now one pair of ravensstill breed on the Isle of Wight cliffs. Itis of the last pair of birds that bred inland,on trees, that I have an anecdote or twoto relate in this place. These were theAvington ravens. How long they inhabitedthat ancient noble domain I do not kno\^.but it is certain that they continued tubreed annually in the park until about theyear 1885. The ravens clump where thrbiids had then- nest still flourishes, butthe more famous, immeasurably older treeclose by—the Gospel Oak—is alas ! dead,These A
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