CHAP. XXXV.] ORNITHOLOGY. 260 



excursion, I fell in with a naturalist of the place, 

 armed with a rifle, and carrying some wild birds 

 which he had shot. He was a shoemaker by trade, 

 and had a collection of more than 150 well-stuffed 

 birds from the neighbourhood. He told me that the 



O 



notes I heard here in the woods were chiefly those 

 of the red-bird, but that some of the most musical 

 were the song of a brown thrush, called, in Indiana, 

 the mocking bird, but differing from the real mu 

 sician of that name, which, though abounding at 

 New Madrid, does not range so far north as the 

 Ohio. Conversing with him, I learnt that the loud 

 tapping of the large red-headed woodpecker, so com 

 mon a sound in the American forests, is not produced, 

 as I had imagined, by the action of the beak perfo 

 rating the bark or wood, but is merely a succession of 

 sharp blows on the trunk of the tree, after which the 

 bird is seen to listen attentively, to know if there 

 are any insects within. Should they stir in their 

 alarm, and betray the fact of their being &quot; at home,&quot; 

 the woodpecker begins immediately to excavate a 

 hole in the rotten timber. 



I had promised to pay a visit to Dr. David Dale 

 Owen, the State geologist of Indiana, and hired a 

 carriage which conveyed us to New Harmony, situ 

 ated on the Wabash river sixty miles above its 

 junction with the Ohio. On our way across the 

 country, we went through a continuous forest, con 

 sisting chiefly of oak, beech, and poplar, without any 

 undergrowth, and in this respect differing remarkably 

 from the wooded valleys and hills of the Alleghanies, 

 and the region eastward of those mountains, as well 



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