November 22, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



483 



Wild Cherry which overliangs it, the frequent chimps of 

 shrubs -which spring- up beside it, the vines which chimber 

 over it, and the tufts of Golden-rod and Aster which gather 

 close against its base. And, on the other hand, a well-laid 

 wall of squared, but unmortared, stones is sufficiently re- 

 fined and architectural to serve with appropriateness any- 

 where except in innmediate contact with an elaborate house 

 of stone or brick. 



But, unfortunately, many New Englanders, who ought 

 to have better taste, try to "improve" upon the stone-walls 

 of their forefathers. Where no mortar is needed, either for 

 stability or for appropriateness of effect, they often take 

 pains to use it. Here we see a wall of small round bould- 

 ers between which great streams of a black pitchy sub- 

 stance have been poured, and there a wall of irregularly 

 shaped stones, where unity of color and simplicity of effect 

 have been destroyed by seams of red mortar. Worse even 

 than the effects thus produced is the effect of a low wall 

 crowned by a sort of cheval-de-frise of jagged stones, set 

 upon end in a bed of mortar as bits of broken bottles are 

 put upon city walls where cats are numerous. The use- 

 lessness of such a crest is evident when a wall is so low 

 that any man or boy can easily leap over it ; and its ugli- 

 ness can hardly be expressed in words. Another imfortu- 

 nate innovation is the use of great round cairns of stones 

 as finishing-posts in the stead of the single great upright 

 stones which our forefathers chose for this purpose. Such 

 cairns are very ugly, especially if they are filled in with 

 earth and planted on top with garden-flowers. Nor are 

 they fortunate in expression even apart from their intrinsic 

 ugliness ; for the end of a wall should look as though it 

 were supported by something stronger than itself, not as 

 though it had weakly coiled around upon itself. And when 

 a gate is attached to these unfortunate heaps of stone, of 

 course their effect is doubly inappropriate, doubly dis- 

 tressing. 



It seems strange that, in sight of the excellent examples 

 of natural, simple, and, therefore, artistic ways of wall- 

 building which every New England village affords, such 

 vulgar vagaries should apparently be growing in favor ; 

 and stranger still that, not the inexperienced villager, but 

 the traveled summer resident should most often be respon- 

 sible for their introduction. 



Is the Woodpecker Useful ? 



1"*0 one who, in his strolls through the woods, at all 

 seasons of the year, keeps his ears as well as his eyes 

 open, the hammering of the Woodpecker is not an unfa- 

 miliar sound. The rapid succession of sharp blows resem- 

 bles a drumming rather than a hammering, and if the 

 sound of this drumming be followed up, one can gener- 

 ally see, on some dead branch or trunk, the author of the 

 noise. Some of our woodpeckers are very handsome, 

 and as they cling to the trunk of a tree, with their 

 large heads for an instant cocked knowingly on one 

 side, and then driving the heavy bill deep into the wood, 

 they make a pretty picture — so pretty, indeed, as to attract 

 the notice of every taxidermist and collector of birds. In- 

 deed, some of the handsomest species are to be seen in 

 almost every group of specimens arranged for artistic effect. 

 Not only in dead trees does the woodpecker seek his food, but 

 living trees also, provided they are attacked by insects, are 

 examined and collected over. The usefulness of the wood- 

 pecker in destroying insects is an accepted fact among agri- 

 culturists and others, and the belief is too useful in pre- 

 serving birds to make it advisable to contradict it. Com- 

 mon as is the sound, and even the sight of the bird engaged 

 in its labors, the appearance of the holes made by it is not 

 so generally known. The woodpecker usually does his 

 work at a considerable distance from the ground, out of 

 easy reach of close observation, and the man who cuts 

 down the tree and chops it into fire-wood pays very little 

 attention, indeed, to what has happened before his axe 

 came into use. There are occasional exceptions, however. 



and one of these is Mr. J. Turner Brakeley, of Bordentown, 

 New Jersey, who spends a large portion of the year in the 

 Pines of southern New Jersey, and for exercise chops his 

 own fire-wood. I owe to him some extremely fine speci- 

 mens of woodpecker work. One of these is the illustra- 

 tion on page 487. The original of the figure is a piece of 

 white oak, thirteen inches in length and three inches in 

 diameter, and it will be seen that it contains not less 

 than four holes made by woodpeckers, probably by one 

 bird and at one time. Each of the holes is nearly or quite 

 an inch wide with the grain, and a trifle less across the 

 grain, narrowing to the bottom of the holes ; each of them 

 reaches into the very centre of the tree and into an insect 

 burrow. The appearance of these holes and their propor- 

 tion to the trunk is very well shown in figure 71, while in 

 figure 72 the same trunk is seen sawed in two, so as to 

 show what the woodpeckers are after. The smudged look 

 of the last illustration comes from a very small amount of 

 oil dropped on the saw to make it work more easily. The 

 oil penetrated the wood, and although it can hardly be 

 seen in the specimen, it appears but too distinctly in the 

 photograph. 



It will be observed that through the centre there is a 

 burrow made by an insect larva, or, really in that distance 

 there were three larvae, the middle one of which had made 

 a channel four inches in length and less than one-eighth of 

 an inch in diameter. The point at which the woodpecker 

 reached the burrow is marked in each case by a black 

 cross, and it will be noticed that in order to reach the 

 larva occupying the central position, and which had made 

 the four-inch burrow, he was compelled to make two 

 attempts ; one of the efforts reaching the burrow below 

 the point at which the larva was working, so that all 

 the labor was wasted. The larva for which all this 

 work was done measured about three-quarters of an inch in 

 length, with a diameter of, perhaps, one-sixteenth of an 

 inch, and would scarcely serve to make more than a small 

 mouthful for even the smallest woodpecker. At the time 

 these holes were made in the trunk, the tree was still living, 

 and, apparently, in a fairly flourishing condition, and I 

 need not tell those who have had any experience in the 

 matter that white oak is not the easiest wood to penetrate. 

 It must have taken this bird at least half an hour of per- 

 sistent work to make each hole, or at least an hour to 

 secure this one larva, weighing only a few grains. It 

 seems as if it would be almost impossible to gain from such a 

 larva a fair return in food-value for the energy expended in 

 getting at it, especially where it is necessary to make two 

 efforts to obtain one mouthful. In the other burrows the 

 bird was more successful, and gained the larva at the first 

 attempt. 



This suggests an interesting question : \M-iich has really 

 done the most injury to the tree, the larva that was mak- 

 ing a small burrow in the centre, or the woodpecker which 

 made two enormous holes extending from the outside to 

 the extreme centre of the tree in order to get him ? There 

 is no question that the woodpecker destroyed a great 

 deal more actual plant-tissue than the larva ; there is no 

 question, either, that he penetrated bark, sap-wood and 

 heart, and, therefore, reached all the parts of the trunk that 

 are most essential to the growth of the tree, causin<r in the 

 one section which I have pictured here (piite a considera- 

 ble interruption in nourishment. On the other hand, the 

 larva had confined its activities to the centre of the tree, 

 had made a little longitudinal burrow only, in the very place 

 where it would interfere least with growth, and therefore 

 its injuries seem really trifling as compared with the injury 

 done by the bird. I do not intend to answer my own 

 question here, or even to give a definite opinion upon the 

 subject, but simply call attention to the fact that it is at 

 least open to argument whether or not the woodpecker is 

 in all cases quite so beneficial a bird as he had been ac- 

 counted. A question that has been often asked me is, How 

 do these birds know just what trees are infested, and just 

 where the larv;r are to be found.' To one who has ob- 



