50 THE WOODPECKER. 



THE WOODPECKER 



Exhibits the most irrefragable proof of an all-wise design in 

 the adaptation of means to ends, and of animal construction to 

 particular purposes, which is indeed visible in every part of the 

 created system. Being destined to live chiefly on the insects 

 which lodge in the trunks of trees, Nature has furnished this bird 

 with a bill of extraordinary hardness, sharpness, and strength. 

 Its tongue also being of great length, and terminating in a sharp, 

 stiff, and bony point, dentated on each side, is peculiarly fitted 

 for striking ants and insects, when forced from their cells. Its 

 legs, being short and strong, are exceedingly well adapted to the 

 purposes of climbing ; and the toes, standing two forward and 

 two backward, are equally serviceable in holding fast to the up- 

 right trunks of trees. This bird, being destined to feed solely 

 on insects, wants that intestine which anatomists call the ccecuni, 

 a circumstance peculiar to the woodpecker tribe. 



When this bird discovers a tree that is likely to contain its fa- 

 vourite food, or appears fit for a habitation wherein to lay its 

 eggs and nurture its young, it immediately begins to make a 

 round hole in the trunk, of about two inches in diameter. This 

 is not performed by boring with its beak as with a gimblet, as 

 some have asserted, but by constant and laborious picking, of 

 which every one may be convinced who frequents the woods and 

 forests where it resides, and sees its operations, or hears the noise 

 which it makes in battering the trees. This bird very frequently 

 attacks the ant-hill, and devours the industrious little insects 

 which have there formed a colony, and are far from apprehend- 

 ing so formidable an invasion. 



Of this kind, naturalists have enumerated more than fifty dif- 

 ferent species, each of them admitting of a number of varieties, 

 greatly differing in size, colour, and appearance, but agreeing in 

 the characteristic marks already mentioned, and in the habits 

 resulting from so peculiar a conformation. Any description, or 

 even enumeration, of so endless a variety, would be tedious, as 

 well as unnecessary: it may suffice, therefore, to say, that the 

 woodpecker, which is the most common in England, is about the 

 size of a magpie: its throat, breast, and belly, are of a pale 

 green ; and the back, wings, and tail, are of a deeper green, 

 and mottled with a variety of colours. 



The woodpecker kind is extensively diffused, and contributes 

 to people the forests in every part of the world. Those of 

 Brazil, Guinea, and some other warm countries, exhibit an as- 

 tonishing instinct and matchless art in suspending their nests 

 from the outermost branches of trees, in order to secure their 

 eggs and their young from the depredations of monkeys and 



