Expedition^ ^c. 1 5 9 



trees of a small size, and the cedars are sometimes so nu- 

 merous, as to give their peculiar and gloomy colouring to 



the landscape. 



Wd listened, as we rode forward, to the note of a bird, 



new to some of us, and bearing a singular resemblance to the 

 noise of a child's toy trumpet. This we soon found to be the 

 cry of the great ivory billed woodpecker, {P'lcus principalis) 

 the largest of the North American species, and confined to the 

 warmer parts. The P. pileatus we had seen on the 28th 

 August, more than one hundred miles above, and this, with 

 the P. erythrocephalus^ were now common- Turkies were 

 very numerous. The paroquet, chuck- wills widow, wood 

 robin, mocking bird, and many other small birds, filled the 

 woods with life and music. The bald eagle, the turkey- 

 buzzard and black vulture, raven, and crow, were seen 

 swarming like the blowing flies, about any spot where a bi- 

 son, an elk, or a deer had fallen a prey to the hunter. About 

 the river were large flocks of pelicans, with numbers of snowy 

 herons, and the beautiful ardea egretta. 



Soon after we had commenced our morning ride, we heard 

 the report of a gun, at a distance of a mile, as we thought, 

 on our left. This was distinctly heard by several of the par- 

 ty, and induced us to believe that white hunters were in the 



tempted to apply it to our skin, where it formed a thin and flexible var- 

 nish, affording us, as we thought some protection from the ticks. 



The fruit consists of radiating, somtwhat woody fibres, teiminating in- 

 a tuberculated and sightly papillose surface. In this fibrous mass, the 

 seeds, which are nearly as large as those of a qumce, are disseminated, 

 We cannot pretend to say what part of the fruit has been described, as the 

 *' pulp wl ich is nc'arly as succulent as that of an orange, sweetish, and 

 perhaps agreeable when fully ripe " In our opinion tlie whole of it is as 

 disagreeable to the taste and as unfit to be eaten, as tlie fruit of the Syca- 

 more, to which it has almost as much resemblance as to the orange 



The tree rises to the height of twenty-five or thirty feet, dividing near 

 the ground into a number of long slender, and fiexuous branches. It in- 

 habits deep and fertile soils along the river valley. The Arkansa appears 

 to be (he northern limit of the range of the IVIaclura, and neither on that riv- 

 er nor on the Canadian, does the tree, or the fruit, attain so considerable a 

 aize, as in warmer latitudes. Of many specimens of tlie fruit examined 

 by Major Long, at the time of his visit to Red river, in 1817, several were 

 found measuring five and a half inehes in diameter. 



