A QUAETET OF WOODLAND DRUMMERS 



. 201 



chiseled. Usually these openings were made in rings about 

 the tree or in rows up and down its side. I counted forty- 

 two holes in one vertical line. These were mostly about 

 the size of a lead pencil, but a few were an inch and a 

 quarter long by three-fourths of an inch wide. Some of 

 the holes .are less than a foot from the ground and they 

 occur at intervals for twenty feet, or fully two-thirds the 

 distance to the top. The perforations were confined chiefly 

 to the trunk of the tree, and in only one case was a limb 

 assailed. 



During the month of March new holes were made daily 

 and on the twenty-ninth the 

 bark showed one thousand 

 six hundred and seventy-one 

 unhealed openings which 

 had been made this spring. 

 Hundreds of old scars bore 

 mute testimony to the work- 

 ings of the sapsucker in pre- 

 vious years. The accom- 

 panying picture is that of a 

 piece of bark four inches in 

 length by a little less than 

 four inches in width which was cut from the side of the 

 tree twelve feet from the ground. It gives a good idea of 



