326 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



&c. lined with wool, hair and feathers. The eggs are usually five, 

 of a bluish brown, freckled with reddish brown. Captain Lewis ob- 

 serves that the nests of the Bald Eagles, where the Magpies abound, 

 are always accompanied by those of two or three of the latter, who 

 are their inseparable attendants.* 



The Baltimore-bird, as Catesby informs us, has been named from 

 its colours, which are black and orange, being those of the arms or 

 livery of Lord Baltimore, formerly proprietary of Maryland. From 

 the singularity of its colours, and the construction of its nest, it is 

 generally known, and, as usual, honoured with a variety of names, 

 such as Hang-nest, Hanging-bird, Golden Robin, Fire-bird, Sec. It is 

 a beautiful bird, and adds much interest to the scenery of the Ameri- 

 can Farm. 



The Purple Grakle or Crow Blackbird is well known to every far- 

 mer of the northern and middle states. About the twentieth of March 

 the Grakles visit Pennsylvania from the south, fly in loose flocks, fre- 

 quent swamps and meadows, and follow in the furrows after the 

 plough; their food at this season consisting of worms, grubs and ca- 

 terpillars, ot which they destroy prodigious numbers, as if to recom- 

 pence the husbandman before hand for the havock which they intend 

 to make among his crops of Indian corn. Every industrious farmer 

 complains of the mischief committed on his corn by the Blackbirds; 

 though, were the same means used, as with Pigeons, to take them in 

 clap nets, multitudes of them might thus be destroyed; and the pro- 

 ducts of them in market, in some measure, indemnify him for their 

 depredations. As some consolation, however, to the cultivator, I can , 

 assure him, that were I placed in his situation, I should hesitate 

 whether to consider these birds most as friends or enemies, as they 

 are particularly destructive to almost all the noxious worms, grubs 

 and caterpillars that infest his fields, which, were they allowed to 

 multiply unmolested, would soon consume nine-tenths of all the pro- 

 duction of his labour, and desolate the country with the miseries of 

 famine. Is not this a striking proof that the Deity hath created nothing 

 in vain; and that it is the duty of man to avail himself of their use- 

 fulness, and guard against their bad effects as securely as possible, 

 without indulging in the barbarous, and even impious wish for their 

 utter extermination ? 



Ivory-billed Woodpecker. This majestic and formidable species, 

 in strength and magnitude stands at the head of the whole class of 

 Woodpeckers hitherto discovered. He may be called the king or 

 chief of his tribe ; and nature seems to have designed him a distin- 

 guished characteristic in the superb carmine crest, and bill of polish- 

 ed ivory with which she has ornamented him. His eye is brilliant 

 and daring; and his whole frame so admirably adapted to his mode 

 of life, and method of procuring subsistence, as to impress on the 

 mind of the examiner the most reverential ideas of the Creator. His 

 manners have also a dignity in them superior to the common herd of 

 Woodpeckers. Trees, shrubbery, orchards, rails, fence posts and old 

 prostrate logs, are alike interesting to these, in their humble and in- 

 defatigable search for prey ; but the royal hunter now before us, scorns 

 the humility of such situations, and seeks the most towering trees of 

 the forest; seeming particularly attached to those prodigious cypress 

 swamps, whose crowded giant sons stretch their bare and blasted or 



* History of the Expedition, vol. i, p. 198* 



