224 LABOUR. 



But the woodpecker would be no true type of the workman if he 

 were not calumniated and persecuted. His modest guild, spread over 

 the two worlds, serves, teaches, and edifies man. His garb varies ; 

 but the common sign by which he may be recognized is the scarlet 

 hood with which the good artisan generally covers his head, his 

 firm and solid skull. His special tool, which is at once pickaxe and 

 auger, chisel and plane, is his square-fashioned bill. His nervous 

 limbs, armed with strong black nails of a sure and firm grasp, seat 

 him securely on his branch, where he remains for whole days, in an 

 awkward attitude, striking always from below upwards. Except in 

 the morning, when he bestirs himself, and stretches his limbs in every 

 direction, like all superior workmen, who allow a few moments' pre- 

 paration in order not to interrupt themselves afterwards, he digs and 

 digs throughout a long day with singular perseverance. You may 

 hear him still later, for he prolongs his work into the night, and thus 

 gains some additional hours. 



His constitution is well adapted for so laborious a life. His 

 muscles, always stretched, render his flesh hard and leathery. The 

 vesicle of the gall, in him very large, seems to indicate a bilious dis- 

 position, eager and violent in work, but otherwise by no means choleric. 



Necessarily the opinions which men have pronounced on this 

 singular being are widely different. They have judged this great 

 worker well or ill, according as they have esteemed or despised work, 

 according as they themselves have been more or less laborious, and 

 have regarded a sedentary and industrious life as cursed or blessed 

 by Heaven. 



It has often been questioned whether the woodpecker was gay oi 

 melancholy, and various answers have been given — perhaps all equally 

 good — according to species and climate. I can easily believe that 

 Wilson and Audubon, who chiefly refer to the golden-winged wood- 

 pecker of the Carolinas, on the threshold of the Tropics, have found 

 him very lively and restless ; this woodpecker gains his livelihood 

 without toil in a genial country, rich in insects ; his curved elegant 

 beak, less rugged than the beak of our species, seems to indicate that he 



