Genus XXIT. PICUS. WOODPECKER. 

 Species I. PICUS PRINCIPALIS. 



lYORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 



[Plate XXIX. Fig. 1.] 



Pirns principalis, Linn. Syst. i., p. 173, 2. — Gmel. Syst. i., p. 425. — Picus niger 

 Carolinensis cristatus, Briss. iv., p. 26, 9. — Pic nair a bee blanc, Buff, vii., 

 p. 46. — PI. Enl. 690. — King of the Woodpeclers. Kalm, vol. ii., p. 85. — White- 

 hilled Woodpecker, Catesb. Car. i., 16. — Arct. Zool. ii., No. 156. — Lath. Syn. ii., 

 p. 553. — Bartram, p. 289. 



This majestic and formidable species, in strength and magnitude, 

 stands at the head of the whole class of Woodpeckers hitherto dis- 

 covered. He may be called the king or chief of his tribe-; and Nature 

 seems to have designed him a distinguished characteristic, in the superb 

 carmine crest, and bill of polished ivory, with which she has ornamented 

 him. His eye is brilliant and daring ; and his whole frame so admira- 

 bly adapted for his mode of life, and method of procuring subsistence, 

 as to impress on the mind of the examiner the most reverential ideas of 

 the Creator. His manners have also a dignity in them superior to the 

 common herd of Woodpeckers. Trees, shi-ubbery, orchards, rails, fence- 

 posts, and old prostrate logs, are alike interesting to those, in their 

 humble and indefatigable search for prey ; but the royal hunter now 

 before us, scorns the humility of such situations, and seeks the most 

 towering trees of the forest ; seeming particularly attached to. those pro- 

 digious cypress swamps, whose crowded giant sons stretch their bare 

 and blasted, or moss-hung, arms midway to the skies. In these almost 

 inaccessible recesses, amid ruinous piles of impending tini])cr, his trum- 

 pet-like note, and loud strokes, resound through the solitary, savage 

 wilds, of which he seems the sole lord and inhabitant. Wherever he 

 frequents, he leaves numerous monuments of his industry behind him. 

 We there see enormous pine-trees, w^ith cart-loads of l)ark lying around 

 their roots, and chips of the trunk itself in such quantities, las to suggest 

 the idea that half a dozen of axemen had been at work for the Avbolc 

 morning. The body of the tree is also disfigured with such numerous 

 and so large excavations, that one can hardly conceive it possible for the 

 whole to be the work of a Woodpecker. With such strength, and an 

 apparatus so powerful, what havoc might he not commit, if numerous, 

 on the most useful of our forest trees ; and yet with all these appear- 



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