The late Mr Waterton having, several time ago, expressed his opinion that ravens are bit by bit becoming extinct in England, I offered the few following words just about my experience of these birds.

The raven in this story is a compound of two great originals, of whom I was, at several times, the proud possessor. The 1st was in the bloom of his youth, once he was discovered in a modest retirement in London, by a friend of mine, and given to me. He had from the first, as Sir Hugh Evans says of Anne Page, 'good gifts', which he improved by study and attention in a most exemplary manner. He slept in a stable--generally on horseback--and so panicky a Newfoundland dog by his preternatural sagacity, that he has been known, by the mere superiority of his genius,