THE WOODPECKEE. 



89 



Woodpecker. 



and any one who possesses a sufficiency of trees surrounded by a 

 wall, and who will not permit a gun to be fired within thoSe pre- 

 cincts, will not have to wait very long before his eyes are glad- 

 dened by the bright colors of the Woodpecker's plumage as it 

 darts from tree to tree, and his ears gratified by the rapid tattoo 

 of its beak upon the wood. 



We should probably have possessed many more specimens of 

 the Woodpecker, had it not been subjected to such persecution. 

 It was universally thought to be very hurtful to trees, and its re- 

 iterated blows were considered as so many direct injuries. If the 

 observer could quietly make his way to a tree on which the 

 Woodpecker was at work, he would find great flakes of bark ly- 

 ing on the ground, as marks of the bird's industry, and might be 

 led to suppose that, in separating them from the trunk, the bird 

 ■was inflicting a positive injury upon it. If, however, he should 

 examine the flakes of bark, he would find that they had already 

 been separated from the tree in the course of nature, and that they 

 were mere useless excrescences upon its surface. Under these 

 bark-flakes whole tribes of insects find a shelter, and it is in order 

 to obtain the insects that the Woodpecker removes the flakes. 



