20 



IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 

 PICUS PBINCIPALIS. 

 [Plate XXIX.— Fig. 1.] 



Picus principalis^ Linn. Syst. I, p. 173.2. — Gmel. Syst. I, j&. 425. — Picus niger Carolinen- 

 sis, Briss. TV, p. 26. 9. Id. 8vo. II, p. 49. — Pic noird bee blanc, Buff. VII,/;. 46. — PL 

 enl. 690. — King of the Woodpeckers, Kalm, voL W, p. 85. — White-billed Woodpecker, 

 Catesb. Car. I, 6. 16. — Arct. Zool. II, JVo. 156. — Lath. Syn. II, p. 553. — Bartram, 

 p. 289.— Peale's Museum, JVo. 1884. 



THIS majestic and formidable species in strength and magni- 

 tude 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 distinguished characteristic 

 in the superb carmine crest and bill of polished ivory with which 

 she has ornamented him. His eye is brilliant and daring; and his 

 whole frame so admirably adapted for 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 those, in their humble and indefati- 

 gable 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 cy- 

 press swamps whose crowded giant sons stretch their bare and 

 blasted or moss-hung arms midway to the skies. In these almost 

 inaccessible recesses, amid ruinous piles of impending timber, his 

 trumpet-like note and loud strokes resound through the solitary 

 savage wilds, of which he seems the sole lord and inhabitant. 



