302 VERTEBRATA. AVES. 



or chief of his tribe, and nature seems to have de- 

 signed him a distinguished characteristic in the su- 

 perb carmine crest, and bill of polished ivory with 

 which she has ornamented him. His eye is brilliant 

 and daring ; and his whole frame so admirably adapt- 

 ed for his mode of life and method of procuring 

 subsistence, as to impress on the mind of the ex- 

 aminer the most reverential ideas of the Creator. 

 His manners have also a dignity in them superior 

 to the common herd of Woodpeckers. Trees, shrub- 

 bery, orchards, rails, fence-posts, and old prostrate 

 logs are alike interesting to those, in their humble 

 and indefatigable search for prey : but the royal 

 hunter now before us scorns the humility of such 

 situations, and seeks the most towering trees of 

 the forest, seeming particularly attached to those 

 prodigious cypress swamps, whos^ crowded giant 

 sons stretch their bare and blasted or moss-hung 

 arms midway to the skies. In these almost inac- 

 cessible recesses, amid ruinous piles of impending 

 timber, his trumpet-like note and loud strokes re- 

 sound through the solitary savage wilds, of which 

 he seems the sole lord and inhabitant. Wherever 

 he frequents, he leaves numerous monuments of his 

 industry behind him. We there see enormous pine- 

 trees, with cart-loads of bark lying around their 

 roots, and chips of the trunk itself in such quanti- 

 ties as to suggest the idea that half-a-dozen of 

 axe-men had been at work there the whole morning. 

 The body of the tree is also disfigured with so 

 numerous and so large excavations, that one can 



