X^S DOWNY WOODPECKER. 



DOWNY WOODPECKER. {Pious pubescens.) 



PLATE IX.— Fig. 4. 



Picus pubescens, Linn. Syst. i. 175, 15. — Gmel. Syst. i. 435. — Petit pic varie de 

 Virginie, Buffon, vii. 76. — Smallest Woodpecker, Catesby,'\. 21. — Arct. Zool. 

 ii. No. 983. — Little Woodpecker, Lath. Synop. ii. 573, 19. Id. Sup. 106.— 

 Peak's Museum, No. 1986. 



DENDROCOPUS PUBESCENS.— Swawsox. 



Picus pubescens, Bonap. Synop. p. 46. — Wagl. Syst. Av. Picus, No. 23. — Den- 

 drocopus, pubescens, North. Zool. ii. p. 307. 



This is the smallest of our woodpeckers,* and so exactly re- 

 sembles the former in its tints and markings, and in almost 

 everything except its diminutive size, that I wonder how it 

 passed through the Count de Buffon's hands without being 

 branded as a " spurious race, degenerated by the influence of 

 food, climate, or some unknown cause." But though it has 

 escaped this infamy, charges of a much more heinous nature 

 have been brought against it, not only by the writer above 

 mentioned, but by the whole venerable body of zoologists in 

 Europe, who have treated of its history, viz., that it is almost 

 constantly boring and digging into apple trees, and that it is 

 the most destructive of the whole genus to the orchards. The 



* This species, as Wilson observes, is the smallest of the American 

 woodpeckers, and it will fill the place in that country which is occupied 

 in Europe and Great Britain by the Picus minor, or least woodpecker ; 

 unlike the latter, however, it is both abundant, and is familiar in its 

 manners. 



Mr Swainson,'in a note to the "Northern Zoology," thinks that several 

 American species are confounded under this. "We have no doubt," he 

 says, " that two, if not three, species of these little woodpeckers, from 

 different parts of North America, have been confounded under the com- 

 mon name of pubescens." He proposes to distinguish them by the names 

 of De?idrocopus medianus, inhabiting the middle parts of North America, 

 chiefly different from D. pubescens in the greater portion of red on the 

 hind head, relative length of the quills, and shape of the tail-feathers ; 

 and Dendrocopus meridionalis, inhabiting Georgia, less than D. pubescens, 

 and with the under plumage hair brown. — Ed. 



