R APTORES. 
INTRODUCTION. 
“ The wood, the mountain, and the barren waste, the 
craggy rock, the river, and the lake, are never searched 
in vain ; each have their peculiar inhabitants, that enliven 
the scene and please the philosophic eye.” — Montague. 
In full accordance with the sentiments of the 
author we have quoted above, and to whom the 
British ornithologist is so greatly indebted, 'have 
we often wandered in the recesses of our woods 
and the passes of far-stretching and craggy moun- 
tains, searched around our wild or beautiful lakes 
and our precipitous sea-coasts, and we have 
never been disappointed. If we did not always 
meet with some species new to our collection, we 
found fresh facts to record of those we already 
possessed ; and we delighted in the landscape 
enlivened by the airy creatures whose structure 
we had been examining, and whose habits we 
could there survey so freely. What would be the 
landscape without its living inhabitants ? The 
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