THE IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 215 



a profusion of food in all the deep, dark, and gloomy swamps dispersed 

 throughout them. 



I wish, kind reader, it were in my power to present to your mind's eye 

 the favourite resort of the Ivory-biiled Woodpecker. Would that I could 

 describe the extent of those deep morasses, overshadowed by millions of 

 gigantic dark cypresses, spreading their sturdy moss-covered branches, as if 

 to admonish intruding man to pause and reflect on the many difficulties 

 which he must encounter, should he persist in venturing farther into their 

 almost inaccessible recesses, extending for miles before him, where he should 

 be interrupted by huge projecting branches, here and there the massy trunk 

 of a fallen and decaying tree, and thousands of creeping and twining plants 

 of numberless species! Would that I could represent to you the dangerous 

 nature of the ground, its oozing, spongy, and miry disposition, although 

 covered with a beautiful but treacherous carpeting, composed of the richest 

 mosses, flags, and water-lilies, no sooner receiving the pressure of the foot 

 than it yields and endangers the very life of the adventurer, whilst here and 

 there, as he approaches an opening, that proves merely a lake of black 

 muddy water, his ear is assailed by the dismal croaking of innumerable 

 frogs, the hissing of serpents, or the bellowing of alligators! Would that I 

 could give you an idea of the sultry pestiferous atmosphere that nearly 

 suffocates the intruder during the meridian heat of our dogdays, in those 

 gloomy and horrible swamps! But the attempt to picture these scenes 

 would be vain. Nothing short of ocular demonstration can impress any 

 adequate idea of them. 



How often, kind reader, have I thought of the difference of the tasks 

 imposed on different minds, when, travelling in countries far distant from 

 those where birds of this species and others as difficult to be procured are 

 now and then offered for sale in the form of dried skins, I have heard the 

 amateur or closet-naturalist express his astonishment that half-a-crown was 

 asked by the person who had perhaps followed the bird when alive over 

 miles of such swamps, and after procuring it, had prepared its skin in the 

 best manner, and carried it to a market thousands of miles distant from the 

 spot where he had obtained it. I must say, that it has at least grieved me 

 as much as when I have heard some idle fop complain of the poverty of the 

 Gallery of the Louvre, where he had paid nothing, or when I have listened 

 to the same infatuated idler lamenting the loss of his shilling, as he sauntered 

 through the Exhibition Rooms of the Royal Academy of London, or any 

 equally valuable repository of art. But, let us return to the biography of 

 the famed Ivory-billed Woodpecker. 



The flight of this bird is graceful in the extreme, although seldom pro- 

 longed to more than a few hundred yards at a time, unless when it has to 



