

SPECIES 9. PIC US TORQUATUS. 

 LEWIS'S WOODPECKER. 



[Plate XX. Fig. 3.] 

 PEALE'S Museum, 7Vo. 2020. 



OP this very beautiful, and singularly marked, species, I am 

 unable to give any farther account than as relates to its external 

 appearance. Several skins of this species were preserved; all 

 of which I examined with care; and found little or no difference 

 among them, either in the tints or disposition of the colours. 



The length of this was eleven inches and a half; the back, 

 wings, and tail, were black, with a strong gloss of green; upper 

 part of the head the same; front, chin, and cheeks, beyond the 

 eyes, a dark rich red; round the neck passes a broad collar of 

 white, which spreads over the breast, and looks as if the fibres 

 of the feathers had been silvered; these feathers are also of a 

 particular structure, the fibres being separate, and of a hair-like 

 texture; belly deep vermilion, and of the same strong hair-like 

 feathers, intermixed with silvery ones; vent black; legs and feet 

 dusky, inclining to greenish blue; bill dark horn colour. 



For a more particular, and, doubtless, a more correct account 

 of this, and the two preceding species,* the reader is referred to 

 General Clark's History of the Expedition, now preparing for 

 the press. The three birds I have here introduced, are but a 

 small part of the valuable collection of new subjects in natural 

 history, discovered, and preserved, amidst a thousand dangers 

 and difficulties, by those two enterprising travellers, whose in- 

 trepidity was only equalled by their discretion, and by their ac- 

 tive and laborious pursuit of whatever might tend to render 



* Wilson here alludes to Clark's Crow, and the Louisiana Tanager, both of 

 which are figured in the same plate with Lewis's Woodpecker. 



