Ns THE ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS. 
ries of the city of Philadelphia: two in the button- 
wood (Platanus occidentalis), and one in the decayed 
limb of anelm. ‘The old ones,” he says, “I ob- 
serve, make their excursions regularly to the woods 
beyond the Schuylkill, about a mile distant; pre- 
serving great silence and circumspection in visiting 
their nests; precautions not much attended to by 
them in the depths of the woods, because there the 
prying eye of man is less to be dreaded. But not- 
withstanding the care which this bird, in common 
with the rest of its genus, takes to place its young 
beyond the reach of enemies, within the hollows of 
trees, yet there is one deadly foe, against whose dep- 
redations neither the height of the tree nor the depth 
of the cavity is the least security. This is the black- 
snake (Colubor constrictor), who frequently glides up 
the trunk of the tree, and, like a skulking savage, en- 
ters the woodpecker’s peaceful apartment, devours 
the eggs or helpless young, in spite of the cries and 
flutterings of the parents; and, if the place be large 
enough, coils himself up in the spot they occupied, 
where he will sometimes remain for several days. 
The eager schoolboy, after hazarding his neck to 
reach the woodpecker’s hole, at the triumphant mo- 
ment when he thinks the nestlings his own, and strips 
his arm, launching it down into the cavity, and grasp- 
ing what he conceives to be the callow young, starts 
with horror at the sight of a hideous snake, and almost 
drops from his giddy pinnacle, retreating down the 
tree with terror and precipitation. Several adven- 
tures of this kind have come to my knowledge; and 
one of them that was attended with serious conse- 
quences, where both boy and snake fell to the ground, 
and a broken thigh and long confinement cured the 
adventurer completely of his ambition for robbing 
woodpeckers’ nests.”* 
Were we merely to judge from the bill alone, we 
should be disposed to consider the ivory-billed wood- 
* Wilson’s Amer. Ornith., i., 146. 
