A RED-HEADED FAMILY. 37 
like’s ef hit wer’ ’joyin’ the joke any, I wud er 
shot hit all ter pieces ef I’d er hed ter lived 
on turpentime all winter!” 
Of the American woodpecker there are more 
than thirty varieties, 1 believe, nearly every 
one of which bears some trace of the grand 
scarlet crown of the great ivory-billed king of 
them all. The question arises—and I shall 
not attempt to answer it—whether the ivory- 
bill is an example of the highest development, 
from the downy woodpecker, say, or whether 
all these inferior species and varieties are the 
result of degeneracy? Neither Darwin nor 
Wallace has given us the key that certainly 
unlocks this very interesting mystery. 
The sap-drinking woodpeckers (.Sphyropicus), 
of which there are three or four varieties in 
this country, appear to form the link between 
the fruit-eating and the non-fruit-eating species 
of the red-headed family. From sipping the 
sap of the sugar-maple to testing the flavor of 
a cherry, a service-berry, or a haw-apple, is a 
short and delightfully natural step. How logi- 
cal, too, for a bird, when once it has acquired 
the fruit-eating habit, to quit delving in the 
hard green wood for a nectar so much inferior 
to that which may be had ready bottled in the 
skins of apples, grapes, and berries! In ac- 
cordance with this rule, JZ. erythrocephalus 
and Centurus carolinus, though great tipplers, 
are too lazy or too wise to bore the maples, 
preferring to sit on the edge of a sugar-trough, 
furtively drinking therefrom leisurely draughts 
of the saccharine blood of the ready-tapped 
trees. I have seen them with their bills 
stained purple to the nostrils with the rich 
juice of the blackberry, and they quarrel 
