off at the accustomed place on the cliffs. It was when I saw her like this, and when the glasses isolated her from the general of rock and sea, that this raven seemed to assume her true size and dignity, and to become really a raven. When she flew it was different. Her sable pinions beating against the face of the precipice added no effect to it, but she was instantly dwarfed and dwindled, and became as nothing, a mere insignificant black speck, against its huge frowning grandeur.
Though, really, their plumage is all of gleaming, purply blues, at a little distance, and when they fly, ravens look a dead ugly black, which is also the case with rooks, who are almost equally handsome when seen closely. Their flight is peculiar, and though it strikes the imagination, yet it cannot be called at all grand or majestic in the ordinary sense of those words. The wings, which are broad, short, and rounded—or at any rate present that appearance to the eye—move with regular, quick little beats, or, when not flapped, are held out very straightly and rigidly. When thus extended, they are on a level with or, perhaps, a little below the line of the back, and from this, in beating, they only deviate downwards, and do not rise above it, or very triflingly so, giving them a very flat appearance. A curious curve is to be remarked in the anterior part of the spread wing, at first backwards towards the tail, and then again forwards towards the head. All the primary quills seem to partake of this shape, and they are also very noticeably disjoined one from another, so that the interspace, even whilst the wing is beaten, looks almost as wide as the quill—by which I mean the
