WOODPECKER 1049 
insects are unable to escape, as they otherwise would, and are thus 
ready for consumption by the birds on their return from the south. 
But this statement has again been contradicted, and moreover it 
is alleged these Woodpeckers follow their instinct so blindly that 
“they do not distinguish between an acorn and a pebble,” so that 
they ‘fill up the holes they have drilled with so much labor, not 
only with acorns but occasionally with stones” (cf. Baird, Brewer 
and Ridgway, V. Am. B. ii. pp. 569-571). Another remarkable 
North-American form is the genus Colaptes, of which enough has 
been said above (FLICKER, pages 258-260),1 
The Picide have offered a fruitful ground for taxonomical 
speculation ; but three subfamilies are admitted by all modern 
systematists—the Woodpeckers proper, Picine; the PIcuLETs, 
Picumnine (page 720) and the Wrynecxs. The most recent 
examination of the Family is that by the late Mr. Hargitt (Cat. B. 
Br, Mus. xviii.), who admitted 45 genera and 343 species or subspecies 
Britt AnD Foot or Ceteus. (After Swainson.) Foor or PIcoIpEs. 
of the first group.2 Having devoted himself for many years to the 
study of the Picidx, and having the largest collection of them in the 
world to work upon, his results are doubtless more correct than those 
of any of his predecessors,* but it seems obvious that until the aid of 
the anatomist is invoked no satisfactory arrangement can be supplied, 
and it is not certain that even then will the desired end be reached, 
for Macgillivray, who furnished Audubon with elaborate descriptions 
of parts of the structure of several North-American forms, found 
considerable differences to exist between species which can hardly 
be but nearly allied.* 
1 When more is known it will very likely be found that a state of things 
somewhat similar to that of Colapies exists in the Palearctic area in regard to the 
various local races of, or ‘‘species” allied to, Dendrocopus major and D. minor 
respectively. 
2 That some Woodpeckers, as in the well-known genus Picoides, have only three 
toes is as little significant as is the same fact in certain KINGFISHERs (p. 488). 
3 Malherbe, Monographie des Picidées, 4 vols. folio, Metz: 1859-62 ; Cabanis, 
Museum Heineanum, iv. Heft 2; Sundevall, Conspectus Avium Picinarum, 
Stockholm: 1866. 
4 Some of the most striking of these differences often lie in the form and 
development of the hyoid bones, and of the muscles which work the extensile 
