228 LABOUR. 
beak. He listens, as the tree resounds, to what it has to say, to 
what there is within it. The process of auscultation, but recently 
adopted in medicine, has been the woodpecker’s leading act for some 
thousands of years. He interrogates, sounds, detects by his ear the 
cavernous voids which the substance of the tree presents. Such an 
one, sound and vigorous in appearance, which, on account of its 
gigantic size, has been marked out for the shipwright’s axe, the wood- 
pecker, by his peculiar skill, condemns as worm-eaten, rotten, sure to 
fail in the most fatal manner possible, to bend in construction, or 
to spring a leak and so produce a wreck. 
The tree thoroughly tested, the woodpecker selects it for himself, 
and establishes himself upon it; there he will exercise his art. The 
trunk is hollow, therefore rotten, therefore populous; a tribe of 
insects inhabits it. You must strike at the gate of the city. The 
citizens in wild tumult attempt to escape, either through the walls of 
the city, or below, through the drains. Sentinels should be posted ; 
but in their default the solitary besieger watches, and from moment 
to moment looks behind to snap up the passing fugitives, making use, 
for this purpose, of an extremely long tongue, which he darts to and 
fro like a miniature serpent. The uncertainty of the sport, and the 
hearty appetite which it stimulates, fill him with passion ; his glance 
pierces through bark and wood ; he is present amidst the terrors and 
the counsels of his enemies. Sometimes he descends very suddenly, 
in alarm lest a secret issue should save the besieged. 
A tree externally sound, but rotten and corrupt within, is a 
terrible image for the patriot who dreams over the destinies of cities. 
Rome, at the epoch when the republic begun to totter, feeling itself 
like to such a tree, trembled one day as a woodpecker alighted on 
the tribunal in open forum, under the very hand of the pretor. The 
people were profoundly moved, and revolved the gloomiest thoughts. 
But the augurs, who had been summoned, arrived : if the bird escaped 
with impunity, the republic would perish ; if he remained, he threat- 
ened only him who held the bird in his hand—the pretor. This 
magistrate, whe was Alius Tubero, killed the bird immediately, 
