“Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.”
Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Sc. 2.
VARIATION IN COLOUR.
We have seen a variety of the jackdaw of a dirty yellowish-white colour; it could scarcely be called “amber-colour’d.” No doubt other members of the genus Corvus have occasionally been observed to vary quite as much in their plumage. Shakespeare says,—
“An amber-colour’d raven was well noted.”
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act iv. Sc. 3.
No doubt it was; quite as much as a white blackbird. This apparent contradiction of terms is in reality no myth. We have seen three or four albino varieties of the blackbird, and could give a tolerably long list of dark-plumaged birds of which pure white, or almost pure white, varieties have been found. This may be the result of disease, or of old age, drying up the animal secretions, and causing the absence of colour which we call white. According to ancient authors, ravens were formerly white, but were changed to black for babbling. The great age to which the raven sometimes attains has been alluded to in the first chapter, where some reference is made to “ancient” eagles, and tame ravens have been known to outlive several masters who owned them successively. But birds, like all things else, succumb to time. Shakespeare tells us,—
“Time’s glory is to calm contending Kings, …
To fill with worm-holes stately monuments, …
To pluck the quills from ancient ravens’ wings.”