164 IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 



ances, and mucli of vulgar prejudice against him, it may fairly be ques- 

 tioned wlietlier he is at all injurious ; or, at least, whether his exertions 

 do not contribute most powerfully to the protection of our timber. 

 Examine closely the tree where he has been at work, and you will soon 

 perceive, that it is neither from motives of mischief nor amusement that 

 he slices off the bark, or digs his way into the trunk. For the sound 

 and healthy tree is not in the least the object of his attention. The 

 diseased, infested with insects, and hastening to putrefaction, are Ms 

 favorites ; there the deadly crawling enemy have formed a lodgment, 

 between the bark and tender wood, to drink up the very vital part of 

 the tree. It is the ravages of these vermin which the intelligent pro- 

 prietor of the forest deplores, as the sole perpetrators of the destruction 

 of his timber. Would it be believed that the larvae of an insect, or fly, 

 no larger than a grain of rice, should silently, and in one season, destroy 

 some thousand acres of pine trees, many of them from two to three feet 

 in diameter, and a hundred and fifty feet high ! Yet whoever passes 

 along the high road from Georgetown to Charleston, in South Carolina, 

 about twenty miles from the former place, can have striking and melan- 

 choly proofs of this fact. In some places the whole woods, as far as 

 you can see around you, are dead, stripped of the bark, their wintry- 

 looking arms and bare trunks bleaching in the sun, and tumbling in 

 ruins before every blast, presenting a frightful picture of desolation. 

 And yet ignorance and prejudice stubbornly persist in directing their 

 indignation against the bird now before us, the constant and mortal 

 enemy of these very vermin, as if the hand that probed the wound, to 

 extract its cause, should be equally detested with that which inflicted it ; 

 or as if the thief-catcher should be confounded with the thief. Until 

 some effectual preventive, or more complete mode of destruction, can be 

 devised against these insects, and their larvae, I would humbly suggest 

 the propriety of protecting, and receiving with proper feelings of grati- 

 tude, the services of this and the whole tribe of Woodpeckers, letting the 

 odium of guilt fall to its proper owners. 



In looking over the accounts given of ,the Ivory-billed Woodpecker 

 by the naturalists of Europe, I find it asserted, that it inhabits from 

 New Jersey to Mexico. I believe, however, that few of them are ever 

 seen to the north of Virginia, and very few of them even in that state. 

 The first place I observed this bird at, when on my way to the south, 

 was about twelve miles north of Wilmington, in North Carolina. There 

 I found the bird from which the drawing of the figure in the plate wa's 

 taken. This bird was only wounded slightly in the wing, and on being 

 caught, uttered a loudly-reiterated, and most piteous note, exactly re- 

 sembling the violent crying of a young child ; which terrified my horse 

 so, as nearly to have cost me my life. It was distressing to hear it. I 

 carried it with me in the chair, under cover, to Wilmington. In passing 



