TiiE SCiENTItsT. 
Birds at. Eaiisas. 
Wo have jiist yeen a copy of ''Birds of 
Kausari" by The late Cch N. S. Goss. The 
book ti-eats of 343 species uml sub siiecies, 
aucl is iliustrated by pliotogravure en- 
_i>-i-avinij,'s, made from mounted bii'ds in 
the '-Goss Ornithological Collection." 
The general descriptions are quoted 
principally from '•Eaird, Brewer and 
Kidgway," the cia.^siticatioii being adapt- 
ed to conform with modern ideas. The 
original notes that follow are especially 
interesting and eniertaiuing. 
Woodpeckers are considered great dee- 
troyers of forests and cultivated trees 
generally. The f alley of this common 
idea is apparent iu his pleasing descrip- 
tion of the Downy Woodpecker which 
comes in for a goodly sliare of popular 
prejudice. He says : ''Of all our woodpeck- 
ers none rid the apple trees of so'many ver- 
min as this, digging off the moss which 
the negligence of the proprietor has suf- 
fered to accumulate, and probing every 
crevice. In fact the orchard is his fa- 
vorite resort in all seasons, and his in- 
dustry is unequalled and almost incessant, 
wliicli is more than can be said of any 
other species we have. In the fall he is 
particularly fond of boring the apple 
trees for insects, digging a circular hole 
through the bark just sufficient to admit 
his bill; after that a second, third, etc., 
in pretty regular horizontal circles 
around the body of the tree. These par- 
allel circles of holes :!.re often not more 
than an inch or an inch and a bait apart, 
and sometimes so close together that I 
have covered eight or ten of them at 
once with a dollar. From nearly the 
surface of the ground up to the first fork, 
and sometimes far beyond it, the whole 
bark of many apple trees is perforated 
in this maner, so as to appear as if made 
by successive discharges of buckshot, 
and our little woodpecker, the subject 
of the present account, is the principal 
])erpen-ator of tiiis su[)posed mischief — 
I suy supposed for so far from these per^ 
forationsof the bark being ruinous, they 
are not only harmless, but. I have good 
reason to believe, really benelicial to the 
health and fertility of the tree. I leave 
it to the philosophical botanists to ac- 
count for this, but the fact I am conii- 
dent of. In more than fifty orchards 
which I myself liave carefully examined, 
those trees which were marked by the 
woodpecker (|or some trees they never 
touched, perhaps because not penetrated 
by insects) vv^ere uniformly the most 
thriving, and seemingly the m.ost pro- 
ductive. Many of these were upwards 
of sixty years old, their trunks complete- 
ly covered with holes, while their 
branches were broad, luxuriant and load- 
ed with fruit. Of decaj^ed trees, more 
than three-fourth were untouched by the 
woodpecker . Several intelligent farmers 
with whom I have conversed candid]}^ 
acknowledged the truth of these observa- 
tions, and with justice look upon these 
birds as benelicial ; but the most com- 
mon opinion is that they bore the trees to 
suck the sap, and so destroy its vegita- 
tion, though pine and other resinous 
trees, on the juice of which it is not pre- 
tended that they feed, are often found 
equally j)erforated. Were the sap ot the 
tree their object, the saccharine juice of 
the birch, the sugar mai)le and sevej-al 
others would be much more inviting, 
because more sweet and nourishing than 
that of either pear or apple tree ; but 1 
have not observed one mark on the 
former for ten thousand that may be seen 
on the latter ; besides, the early part of 
the spring is the season when the sap 
flows most abundantly, whereas it is only 
during the months of Septen^ber, 
October and November that woodpeckers 
are seen so indefatigably engaged in or- 
chards, probing every crack and crevice, 
boaring through the bark, and, what is 
worth remarking, chiefly on the south 
