210 LEWIS’S WOODPECKER 
LEWIS’S WOODPECKER.—PICUS TORQUATUS. — Fie. 95. 
Peale’s Museum, No. 2020. 
MELANERPES? TORQUATUS. — Japping.* 
Picus torquatus, Bonap. Synop. p. 46. 
OF this very beautiful and singularly-marked species, I am unable 
to give any further account than as relates to its external appearance. 
Several skins of this species were preserved, all of which | examined 
with care, and found little or no difference among them, either in the 
tints or dispositipn of the colors. 
The length of this was eleven inches and a half; the back, wings, 
and tail were black, with a strong gloss of green; upper part of the 
head, the same ; front, chin, and cheeks beyond ‘the eyes, a dark, rich 
red; round the neck passes a broad collar of white, which spreads 
over the breast, and looks as if the fibres of the feathers had been sil- 
vered: these feathers are also of a particular structure, the fibres being 
separate, and of a hair-like texture; belly, deep vermilion, and of the 
same strong, hair-like feathers, intermixed with silvery ones; vent, 
black; legs and feet, dusky, inclining to greenish blue; bill, dark 
horn color. 
For a more particular, and doubtless a more correct account of this 
and the two preceding species, the reader 1s referred to General 
Clark’s History of the Expedition. The three birds I have here intro- 
duced are but a small part of the valuable collection of new subjects 
in natural history discovered and preserved, amidst a thousand dangers 
and difficulties, by those two enterprising travellers, whose intrepidity 
was only equalled by their discretion, and by their active and laborious 
pursuit of whatever might tend to render their journey useful to sci- 
ence and to their country. It was the request and particular wish of 
Captain Lewis, made to me in person, that I should make drawings of 
such of the feathered tribes as had been preserved, and were new. 
That brave soldier, that amiable and excellent man, over whose soli- 
tary grave in the wilderness I have since shed tears of affliction, hav- 
ing been cut off in the prime of his life, I hope I shall be pardoned for 
consecrating this humble note to his memory, until a more able pen 
shall do better justice to the subject. 
* Having no authority from the founder of the genus, dnd not having seen the 
bird, I place it with the Red-headed Woodpecker provisionally. The length- 
ened wings, proportion of toes, and distribution of the colors, seem, however, to 
warrant it. 
The female is said by Bonaparte, on the authority of Mr. Peale, who shot them 
breeding on the Rocky Mountains, to resemble the male closely. — Ep. 
