172 GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER. 



bill, and that, as been before observed, is still a little wedge-formed at 

 the point, it differs in no one characteristic from the rest of its genus. 

 Its nostrils are covered with tufts of recumbent hairs or small feathei'S ; 

 its tongue is round, worm-shaped, flattened towards the tip, pointed, and 

 furnished with minute barbs; it is also long, missile, and can be 

 instantaneously protruded to an uncommon distance. The os hyoides, or 

 internal parts of the tongue, like those of its tribe, is a substance for 

 strength and elasticity resembling whalebone, divided into two branches, 

 each the thickness of a knitting-needle, that pass, one on each side of the 

 neck, to the hind-head, where they unite, and run up along the skull in 

 a groove, covered with a thin membrane or sheath ; descend into the 

 upper mandible by the right side of the right nostril, and reach to 

 within half an inch of the point of the bill, to which they are attached 

 by another extremely elastic membrane, that yields when the tongue is 

 thrown out, and contracts as it is retracted. In the other Woodpeckers 

 we behold the same apparatus, differing a little in different species. In 

 some these cartilaginous substances reach only to the top of the cranium ; 

 in others they reach to the nostril ; and in one species they are wound 

 round the bone of the right eye, which projects considerably more than 

 the left for its accommodation. 



The tongue of the Golden-winged Woodpecker, like the others, is also 

 supplied with a viscid fluid, secreted by two glands, that lie under the ear 

 on each side, and are at least five times larger in this species than in any 

 other of its size ; with this the tongue is continually moistened, so that 

 every small insect it touches instantly adheres to it. The tail, in its 

 strength and pointedness, as well as the feet and claws, prove that the 

 bird was designed for climbing ; and in fact I have scarcely ever seen it 

 on a tree five minutes at a time without climbing ; hopping not only up- 

 wards and downwards, but spirally ; pursuing and playing with its fellow, 

 in this manner, round the body of the tree. I have also seen them a 

 hundred times alight on the trunk of the tree ; though they more fre- 

 quently alight on the branches ; but that they climb, construct like nests, 

 lay the same number, and the like colored eggs, and have the manners 

 and habits of the Woodpeckers, is notorious to every American natural- 

 ist ; while neither in the form of their body, nor any other part, except 

 in the bill being somewhat bent, and the toes placed two before, and two 

 behind, have they the smallest resemblance whatever to the Cuckoo. 



It may not be improper, however, to observe, that there is another 

 species of Woodpecker, called also Golden- Winged,* which inhabits the 

 country near the Cape of Good Hope, and resembles the present, it is 

 said, almost exactly in the color and form of its bill, and in the tint and 

 markings of its plumage ; with this difference, that the moustaches are 



* Picus cafer, Turton's Linn. 



