Sbrif;e=1iaotes 



half-cuckoo woodpecker is a phrase not to 

 be scowled at ; one must melt before it. 



I know of nothing in bird-literature 

 more curiously interesting than Buffon's 

 essay on the woodpecker family. It 

 has been the subject of much perfectly 

 proper animadversion on account of its 

 inaccuracies ; but with all due allowance in 

 behalf of science, it is a charming piece of 

 literary art, in which the true woodpecker 

 character is set forth with singular power. 

 Some of the statements touching the ex- 

 igencies and peculiarities of the life of the 

 bird are very much exaggerated if we take 

 them as of general application, and still 

 more if we apply them to certain species. 

 There are woodpeckers, however, that ap- 

 pear to fill exactly the mold of Buffon's 

 description of their solitary, laborious, and 

 stinted lives. Our American hairy wood- 

 pecker has a very hard time of it during 

 winter north of latitude 35°. The same 

 may be said of the sapsucker when the 

 trees freeze up. But what I find most 

 enjoyable in this particular essay is the 

 artistic bouquet of it. Buffon had prob- 

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