The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-10-03
RAVEN A CLEVER BIRD.
Continued from page SD

Most villages in Dorset-as is, I
suppose, the case in other countries
have at least one happy or unhappy
imbecile living among them who-such
is the kindness of the peoples al
most always the village pet rather
then the village butt. The raven soon
detected the weakness of the Stafford
imbecile, and would demonstrate
around him and make vigorous attacks
on his legs whenever he passed through
the yard. He showed similar insight
and contempt for intellectual weak
ness when I kept him for term or
two in the garden of Trinity College,
Oxford. The son of the gardener, who
helped his father in the more mecha-
meal part of his work, happened not
to be strong in his mind. The raven
instantly recognized the difference be-
tween them, and while he never mo-
Tested the father in his work, he never
left the son alone in his. Sometimes
he would fly up to my window while I
was giving a lecture, it may be on
some Greek play to my pupils, and
would interpolate remarks which, if
they were a sore interruption to the
lecture, seemed often as much to the
point as some of the remarks of the
chorus, through which we were pain
fully laboring.
He was quite impervious to rain or
frost or snow. When the snow was
deep on the ground, he would play in it
or roll over in it like a child. He chose
for his roosting place the ridge of a
matched wall in a very exposed place
in the allotments, and stuck to it
through all weathers. Pets usually
come to sad or premature end. Wa
terton's pet raven, Marco, persisted from
blow of one of his best friends. an
angry coachman, or whom, in moment
of play or of excitement, he had infiict-
ed a sharp nip. So sharp and strong
is a ravens beak that he can hardly
ever touch the hand without bringing
blood cutting rather deep. Dickens's
pet raven, Grip, developed an 'unfor-
tunate taste for white paint and putty
and diedaof the slow poison, as is mar
rated in Dickens's own preface to Bar |
naby,' and at greater length in his
Life, by Forster. My pet raven, Jacob, |
met with the most ignominious and un-
worthy fate of all. He either walked or
slipped into, a barrel of LIQUID pigs
wash, and was found by me therein. |
An open verdict of found drowned was |
Oil mat COulQ ne Sdlu ABOUT
Another pet raven from Millicent |
Clump could not be allowed such un-
fettered liberty at Harrow as he might I
have had in his native air of Dorset. /
He was kept in a large aviary, where, |
if his opportunities for mischief were
less, his progress in language was
greater. His own name Jacob, and /
that of the gardener, Holloway. he
IN hectoring, now in a persuasive
tone, and now again in the most con-
idential of whispers. This last was a
great effort. He would bend his body
right down to the perch on which he
stood. open his wings, and every feath-
er in his body would stand erect or
would move in sympathy with it. But
his pleasure was in proportion to his
pain. He loved, as clever parrot does.
to call forth peal of laughter, and
though he could not laugh himself-it
was almost the only human achievement
that he did not attempt-his eye show
ed that he knew all about it. 'How's
that? Out, was question and an
swer which he picked up for himself +
from a cricket yard at some little dis
lance.
- bad cough. which I had, he man
aged TO initiate so well that people who
passed down the adjoining lane thought
It inconsiderate of me to expose a gar
1ener who had such a hacking cough
70 all weathers in my garden. He was
4 capital catch Blackberries thrown
to him-as boys throw a ball to one
another when practicing themselves at
catch'-he would manage to intercept,
whether thrown high or low, quickly or
slowly, from his central perch by a
deXterous movement of his neck and /,
oeak, without ever shifting his position, /,
md hardly ever missing one. even on its
rebound when thrown against the OPP I,
posite wall of the cage. Morsels of
sood given to him he would pack, one
after the other, into the expansive skin
IF his lower mandible, till it was puffed
out like pouch: and he then would
ook at you with queer and knowing
e-are-they- -gone-to?' sort of ex-
When he had given you time
to guess. he would gravely reproduce
them, one after the other. and proceed
to hide them in various parts of his
cage, patting them down under sand
or stones or rubbish of any kind, and
then again would disinter them as
quickly as children do a doll which they
have buried in their play, with a
genuine Eureka look.
The key of his cage door, if it were
left open by chance, he would whip out |