THE WOODPECKER. 379 







Some European naturalists, (and among the rest Linnaeus 

 himself, in his tenth edition of the Systema Naturae,) have 

 classed this bird with the genus Cuculus, or Cuckoo ; inform- 

 ing their readers that it possesses many of the habits of the 

 Cuckoo ; that it is almost always on the ground ; is never 

 seen to climb trees like the other Woodpeckers, and that its 

 bill is altogether unlike theirs ; every one of which assertions 

 I must say is incorrect, and could have only proceeded from 

 an entire unacquaintance with the manners of the bird. 

 Except in the article of the bill, and that, as has 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 nos- 

 trils are covered with tufts of recumbent hairs or small feath- 

 ers ; 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 uncom- 

 mon 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 mem- 

 brane 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 ; 



