478 PiciD.E. 



as to its origin, already mentioned (page 471). A few years 

 after, Eay, in a letter to Tancred Eobinson (Correspondence, 

 Ray Soc. Ed. p. 150), suggested that Plot's " Wood-cracker" 

 was the present species, having, he said, " observed that bird 

 sitting on the top of an oaken tree, making with her bill such 

 a cracking or snapping noise, as we heard a long way off, the 

 several snaps or cracks succeeding one another with that ex- 

 traordinary swiftness that we could but wonder at it ; " but 

 avowing his inability to discern how it was effected, as he did 

 also later (Syn. Meth. Av. p. 43), though then mentioning 

 the possibility of its being done " creberrima percussione." 

 The late Mr. W. T. Bree also confessed (Mag. Nat. Hist. i. 

 p. 301) that, though he had watched the operation within 

 a few yards' distance, he was " at a loss to account for the 

 manner in which the noise is produced ; " adding, in another 

 communication (oj). cit. v. p. 64), that the strokes of the 

 bird's bill against the tree, rapid as they were, fell far short, 

 as it appeared to him, of the almost incredible celerity with 

 which the sounds were repeated. But as Dovaston quaintly 

 and truly says {torn. cit. p. 148) : " The motion is so quick 

 as to be invisible, and the head appears in two places at 

 once;" adding *' it is surprising, and to me wondrously 

 pleasing, to observe the many varieties of tone and pitch in 

 their loud churring, as they change their place on boughs 

 of different vibration." Here the matter must be left for 

 further investigation ; ' but the statement that the noise is 

 ever made by the knocking of the bird's beak against the 

 sides of a chink is wholly unsupported by direct evidence ; 

 while it can certainly be produced by blows delivered with 

 the utmost rapidity upon the surface of a branch, and there 

 is much reason to believe its function to be that of an in- 

 strumental instead of a vocal love-call, as first suggested by 

 Mudie (Brit. Nat. ii. p. 293). 



it) to be about the bigness of a Sparrow, with a Hue back, and a reddish breast, 

 a wide mouth and a long bill, which it puts into a crack or splinter of a rotten 

 bough of a Tree, and makes a noise as if it were rending asunder, with that 

 violence, that the noise may be heard at least ticelve score yards, some have 

 ventured to say a mile from the place." It will be seen that the bird described 

 was a Nuthatch, but the noise was no doubt made by a Woodpecker. 



