V 



BIRDS OF PREY. (THE RAPTORES). 



It was one of my saddest hours when, seeking in nature 

 ^i^\ a refuge from the thoughts of the age, I for the first time 

 "^ encountered the head of the viper. This occurred in a 

 /^ valuable museum of anatomical imitations. The head, 

 marvellously imitated and enormously enlarged, so as to remind one 

 of the tiger's and the jaguar's, exposed in its horrible form a some- 

 thino- still more horrible. You seized at once the delicate, infinite, 

 fearfully prescient precautions by which the deadly machine is so 



