Genus XXIT. PIOUS. WOODPECKER. 
Si'EciEs I. PICUS PRINCIPALIS. 
IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 
[Plate XXIX. Fig. 1.] 
Picus principalis, Lixn. Si/si. i., p. 173, 2. — Gmel. Si/si. i., p. 42.5. — Picus niger 
Carolinensis cristatus, Briss. iv., p. 2G, 9. — Pic iKiir d bee blanc, Buff, vii., 
p. 46. — PI. Pal. 090. —King of the Woodpeckers. Kalm, vol. ii., p. 8.5. — White- 
hilled Woodpecker, Catesb. Car. i., IG. — Arct. Zuol. ii., No. 156. — Lath. Sijn. ii., 
p. 553. — Bartram, p. 289. 
This majestic and formidable species, in strength and magnitude, 
stands at the head of the whole class of Woodpeckers hitherto dis- 
covered. 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 admira- 
bly 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, shrul;)1)ery, orchards, rails, fence- 
posts, and old prostrate logs, are alike interesting to those, in their 
humlde and indefatigable 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 pro- 
digious cypress swamps, whose crowded giant sons stretch their bare 
and blasted, or moss-hung, arms mid^vay to the skies. In these almost 
inaccessible recesses, amid ruinous piles of impending timber, his trum- 
pet-like note, and loud strokes, resound through the solitary, savage 
wilds, of which he seems the sole lord and inhabitant. Wherever he 
frequents, he leaves numerous monuments of his industry behind him. 
We tliere see enormous j^ine-trees, with cart-loads of bark lying around 
their roots, and chips of the trunk itself in such quantities, as to suggest 
the idea that half a dozen of axemen had been at work for the whole 
morning. The body of the tree is also disfigured with such numerous 
and so large excavations, that one can hardly 'conceive it possible for the 
whole to be the work of a Woodpecker. With such strength, and an 
apparatus so powerful, what havoc might he not commit, if numerous, 
on the most useful of our forest trees ; and yet with all these appear- 
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