12 



the body of the tree; these parallel circles of holes are often not more 

 than an inch, or an inch and a half, apart, and sometimes so close together 

 that I have covered eight or ten of them at once with a dollar.^ 



Nuttall says : — 



These perforations made by our Sapsuckers, as the present [Downy] 

 and Hairy species are sometimes called, are carried round the trunks 

 and branches of the orchard trees in regular circles. 



Nuttall followed Wilson and perhaps did not depend entirely 

 on his own observations, for he says : -^ 



The circles of round holes which it makes with so much regularity 

 around the . . . trees are no doubt made for the purpose of getting at 

 the sweet sap which they contain. / 



He says also: — 



In the month of February, 1830, I observed these borers busy tapping 

 the small live trunks of several wax myrtles {Myrica cerifera); and these 

 perforations were carried down into the alburnum, or sap-wood, but no 

 farther. ... On examining the oozing sap I found it to be exceedingly 

 saccharine, but in some instances astringent or nearly tasteless.'' 



Dr. Henry Bryant of Boston published the following in 

 1866: — 



It has long been known that some of our smaller woodpeckers pick out 

 portions of the sound bark of trees, particularly of apple trees, where 

 there are no larvae and apparently no inducement for them to do so. . . 

 They [the holes] are generally seen in circles round the limbs or trunks of 

 small irregularly rounded holes, and in this vicinity are made almost 

 exclusively by the downy woodpecker (P. puhescens) aided occasionally 

 by the hairy woodpecker (P. villosiis).^ 



Dr. J. A. Allen, in a memoir of the Boston Society of Natural 

 History, says: — 



The perforations made in the' bark of trees by woodpeckers, forming 

 transverse rings, and sometimes so numerous as to do serious injury to 

 the trees, have of late been very commonly attributed almost solely to 



1 Wilson, Alexander, and Bonaparte, Charles Lucien; American Ornithology, or the Natural 

 History of the Birds of the United States, 1832, Vol. I, p. 161. 



2 Chamberlain, Montague: A Popular Handbook of the Ornithology of the United States and 

 Canada, based on Nuttall's Manual, 1891, Vol. I, pp, 453, 454. 



8 Proceedings, Boston Society of Natural History, 1866. Vol. X, pp. 91, 92. 



