536 XOKTII AMERICAN BIRDS. 



rounded, and with numerous long and soft bristly hairs. This is, of course, 

 very different from the long, extensile, acutely pointed tongue of other 

 Woodpeckers, with its tip armed with a few strong, sharp, sliort, recurved 

 barbs. 



Dr. Hoy and Dr. Coues maintain that tlie food of these Woodpeckers con- 

 sists mainly of the cambium or soft inner bark of trees, which is cut out 

 in patches sometimes of several inches in extent, and usually producing 

 scpiare holes in the bark, not rountled ones. As may be sujiposed, such pro- 

 ceedings are very injurious to the trees, and justly call down the vengeance 

 of their proprietors. This diet is varied with insects and fruits, when they 

 can be had, but it is believed that cambium is their principal sustenance. 



This strongly marked genus appears to be composed of two sections and 

 three well-defined species ; the first being characterized by having the back 

 variegated with whitish, and the jugulum with a sharply defined crescentic 

 patch of black, though the latter is sometimes concealed by red, when the 

 whole head and neck are of the latter color, and the sharply defined striped 

 pattern of the cephalic regions, seen in tlie normal plumage, obliterated. 

 Comparing the extreme conditions of plumage to be seen in this tAqie, as in 

 the females of ruriiis and of ruber, the differences appear wide indeed, and 

 few would entertain for a moment a suspicion of their specific identity ; yet 

 upon carefully examining a sufficiently large series of specimens, we find 

 these extremes to be connected by an unbroken transition, and are thus led 

 to view these different conditions as manifestations of a peculiar law princi- 

 pally affecting a certain coloi-, which leads us irresistibly to the conclusion 

 that the group which at first seemed to compose a section of the genus is in 

 reality only an association of forms of specific identity. Beginning with the 

 birds of the Atlantic region (S. varius), we find in this series tlie minimum 

 amount of red ; indeed, many adult females occur which lack tliis color en- 

 tirely, having not only the Mdiole throat white, but the entire pileum glossy- 

 black ; usually, however, the latter is crimson. In adult males from this 

 region the front and crown are always crimson, sliarplv defined, and bordered 

 laterally and posteriorly with glossy-black ; and below the black occipital 

 band is another of dirty white ; the crimson of the throat is wholly con- 

 fined between the continuous broad, black malar stripes, and there is no 

 tinge of red on the auriculars ; there is a broad, sharply defined stiipe of 

 white beginning with the nasal tufts, passing beneath the black loral and 

 auricular stripe, and continuing downward into the yellowish of the abdo- 

 men, giving the large, glossy-l)lack pectoral area a sharply defined outline ; 

 the dirty whitish nuchal band is continued forward beneath the black occip- 

 ital crescent to above the middle of the eye. The pattern just described 

 will be found in ninety-nine out of a hundred specimens from the Eastern 

 Province of North America (also the West Indies and whole of Mexico); 

 but a single adult male, from Carlisle, Penn. (No. 12,(i71, W. M. Baird), has 

 the whitish nuchal band distinctly tintied with red, thoutrh diffcrin'' in 



