THE GREEN WOOD-PECKER.. 211 



webs; and one of them, or at least two, can support the 

 weight of the bird without bending. 



The wood-pecker is especially a bird of the ancient forests. 

 You do not find it in the hedge or the coppice, where so 

 many of the little birds, especially the summer migrants, 

 build their nests, and spend their mid-days, when the reflec- 

 tions of the sun come bright on all sides of the foliage, in 

 picking the soft caterpillars from the leaves, or capturing the 

 insects that resort thither for the purpose of depositing fresh 

 myriads; and when they have thus secured the shelter and 

 beauty of their habitation, farewell the evening, and again 

 hail the morning, with their joyous songs: the aged tree is 

 all to the wood-pecker, and the wood-pecker is much to the 

 aged tree. 



Whenever any thing that once had life dies exposed to an 

 atmosphere which is not in the extreme of heat to torrefy or 

 in the extreme of cold to burn, creatures come, true to the 

 grand purpose, to win back the materials for new uses. The 

 mosses and lichens insinuate their roots into the decaying 

 bark, and the larvae of countless beetles and flies mine into 

 the lagging cumberer, where it lingers in life, and loses the 

 acerbity of high health, or they drill through and through 

 the dead and decaying wood. Of these, as well as of all 

 things that nature produces, there is a surplus to meet extra- 

 ordinary contingencies when they occur; and if there were 

 not something to keep down that surplus on ordinary occa- 

 sions, the old trees would speedily be destroyed, the races that 

 prey on them would perish, and the place would be one step 

 nearer to desolation. 



But nature has appointed the wood-peckers conservators 

 of the wood of old trees, furnished them admirably for their 

 office, and so formed their habits that an old tree is an Eden 

 to them, fraught with safety, and redolent of plenty and fat- 

 ness. So exquisitely are they fitted for their office, that the 



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