Raven
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Raven. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a bird of the crow family. It is distinguished by its large size and hoarse croak. The European raven nests in rocky ledges and lives on fruits, nuts, snails, and not infrequently, on helpless young hares and lambs, or even carrion. Barnaby Rudge and his raven afford Dickens an opportunity for some fine passages. Very likely Poe had the same species in mind when he wrote. The Raven. The American or northern raven is of local distribution, ranging from Alaska and Greenland to British Columbia and North Carolina . It is found locally at interior points. It has a length of twenty to twenty-seven inches and a wing expanse of about forty inches. From two to seven bluish green eggs with olive markings are placed in a stick-built, grass-lined nest in some tree or on a cliff. No complaint has been lodged against the habits of this solemn, long-winged denizen of the far-off woods. In Scotland the raven is called a corbie. The European raven is a much tamer bird than the American raven. Both species are "as black as a crow." See Crow
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the genus Corvus, and especially C. corax, one of the largest of the Passerines. It is about 26 inches long, plumage black, glossed with steel-blue and purple; very widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere. The raven has played an important part in mythology and folk-lore. It is the first bird mentioned by name in the Old Testament (Gen. viii: 7); by the ministry of ravens Elijah was fed (I Kings xvii: 6), and they were to be the ministers of vengeance on unruly children (Prov. xxx: 17). The raven was the bird of Odin, and in classic mythology was of illomen, a character often attributed to it by the early English dramatists. Marlowe calls it the "sad presageful raven," and Shakespeare repeatedly refers to the belief that its appearance foreboded misfortune. This belief, which is widespread, probably arose from the preternaturally grave manner of the bird, its sable plumage, and the readiness with which it learns to imitate human speech.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's treated the "American or northern raven" as a bird apart from the European one; both are now classed as a single Holarctic species, Corvus corax, the common raven, though genetic work since 2000 has shown that ravens in California form a distinct lineage and some researchers argue for splitting it off. Aiton's 1910 line that "no complaint has been lodged against the habits of this solemn, long-winged denizen" has not aged well: the raven has expanded hugely across the American West on the back of landfills, roadkill and power-line nest sites, and is now culled in places to protect desert tortoise hatchlings and sage-grouse nests. In Britain, where the bird had been persecuted back to the western cliffs, it has recolonised lowland England and again breeds in and around London. The biggest shift is in reputation: laboratory and field work since the 1990s, notably by Bernd Heinrich and Thomas Bugnyar, has shown ravens caching food deceptively, planning for future events and tracking what rivals can see, putting them alongside great apes in tests of intelligence rather than merely, as Collier's had it in 1921, wearing a "preternaturally grave manner."
Written for this edition, 2026.