The late Mr Waterton having some time ago expressed his opinion that ravens are gradually becoming extinct in England I offered the few following words about my experience of these birds. The raven in this story is a compound of two great originals of whom I was at different times the proud possessor. The first was in the bloom of his youth when 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 terrified a Newfoundland dog by his preternatural sagacity that he has been known by the mere superiority of his genius to walk off unmolested with the dog's dinner from before his face. He was rapidly rising in acquirements and virtues when in an evil hour his stable was newly painted. He observed the workmen closely saw that they were careful of the paint and immediately burned to possess it. On their going to dinner he ate up all they had left behind consisting of a pound or two of white lead; and this youthful indiscretion terminated in death.