GOLD-WINGED WOODPECKER. 49 



characteristic from the rest of its genus. Its nostrils are 

 covered with tufts of recumbent hairs, or small feathers ; its 

 tongue is round, worm-shaped, flattened towards the tip, 

 pointed, and furnished with minute barbs ; it is also long, 

 missile, and can be instantaneously protruded to an uncommon 

 distance. The os hyoides, or internal parts of the tongue, 

 like those of its tribe, is a substance for strength and elasticity 

 resembling whalebone, divided into two branches, each the 

 thickness of a knitting-needle, that pass, one on each side of 

 the neck, to the hind head, where they unite, and run up 

 along the skull in a groove, covered with a thin membrane, 

 or sheath, descend into the upper mandible by the right side 

 of the right nostril, and reach to within half an inch of the 

 point of the bill, to which they are attached by another ex- 

 tremely elastic membrane, that yields when the tongue is 

 thrown out, and contracts as it is retracted. In the other 

 woodpeckers we behold the same apparatus, differing a little 

 in different species. In some, these cartilaginous substances 

 reach only to the top of the cranium ; in others, they reach to 

 the nostril ; and in one species they are wound round the bone 

 of the right eye, which projects considerably more than the 

 left for its accommodation. 



The tongue of the gold-winged woodpecker, like the others, 

 is also supplied with a viscid fluid, secreted by two glands 

 that lie under the ear on each side, and are at least five times 

 larger in this species than in any other of its size ; with this 

 the tongue is continually moistened, so that every small insect 

 it touches instantly adheres to it. The tail, in its strength 

 and pointedness, as well as the feet and claws, prove that the 

 bird was designed for climbing ; and in fact I have scarcely 

 ever seen it on a tree five minutes at a time without climbing ; 

 hopping not only upward and downward, but spirally ; pur- 

 suing and playing with its fellow in this manner round the 

 body of the tree. I have also seen them a hundred times 

 alight on the trunk of the tree, though they more frequently 

 alight on the branches ; but that they climb, construct like 



VOL. I. D 



