90 HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



As is well known, this bird makes its nest in a tunnel which it 

 hollows in the tree, and to a superficial observer might easily be 

 reckoned among the enemies of the forest. If it were to burrow 

 into sound timber, as is often supposed to be the case, it would 

 certainly rank among the deadliest foes of our trees ; for, in the 

 spots where it still resides, its burrows may be seen in plenty, per- 

 forating the trunks and branches of the finest and most pictur- 

 esque trees. But, in point of fact, none of the British Woodpeck- 

 ers are able to cut so deep a tunnel into sound and growing wood, 

 and are perforce obliged to choose timber which is already dead, 

 and which has begun to decay. 



Sometimes the bird selects a spot where a branch has been 

 blown down, leaving a hollow in which the rain has lodged and 

 eaten its way deeply into the stem. In such places the wood is 

 so soft that it can be broken away with the fingers, or scraped out 

 with a stick ; and in many a noble tree, which seems to the eye 

 to be perfectly sound, the very heart-wood is being slowly dis- 

 solved by the action of water, which has gained access through 

 some unsuspected hole. Water, when thus admitted to the inte- 

 rior of a tree, fills its centre with decay ; and if a perforation be 

 made through the trunk, so as to let out the contained fluid, gal- 

 lon after gallon of dark brown water will gush forth, mixed with 

 fragments of decayed wood, and betray, by its volume and con- 

 sistency, the extent of the damage which it has occasioned. 



Oftentimes a large fungus will start from a tree, and in some 

 mysterious manner will sap the life-power of the spot on which it 

 grows. When the fungus falls in the autumn, it leaves scarcely 

 a trace of its presence, the tree being apparently as healthy as be- 

 fore the advent of the parasite. But the whole character of the 

 wood has been changed by the strange power of the fungus, being 

 soft and cork-like to the touch. Although the eye of man can 

 not readily perceive the injury, the instinct of the Woodpecker 

 soon leads the bird to the spot, and it is in this dead, soft, and 

 spongy wood that the burrow is made. Mr. Waterton, who, I be- 

 lieve, was the first to point out this fact, has shown me many ex- 

 amples of the fungus and its ravages among the trees, several fine 

 ash-trees and sycamores having been reduced to mere stumps by 

 the silent operation of the vegetable parasite. 



It is, by the way, a rather remarkable fact, that a tree which 

 has been penetrated by water can be relieved of its burden by 

 the hand of man. An auger, or long-shanked centre-bit, judi- 



