164 IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 
ances, and much of vulgar prejudice against him, it may fairly be ques- 
tioned Avhether he is at all injurious ; or, at least, whether his exertions 
do not contribute most powerfully to the protection of our timber. 
Examine closely the tree where he has been at work, and you will soon 
perceive, that it is neither from motives of mischief nor amusement that 
he slices off the bark, or digs his way into the trunk. For the sound 
and healthy tree is not in the least the object of his attention. The 
diseased, infested with insects, and hastening to putrefaction, are Ids 
favorites ; there the deadly crawling enemy have formed a lodgment, 
between the bark and tender wood, to drink up the very vital part of 
the tree. It is the ravages of these vermin which the intelligent pro- 
prietor of the forest deplores, as the sole perpetrators of the destruction 
of his timber. Would it be believed that the larvte of an insect, or fly, 
no larger than a grain of rice, should silently, and in one season, destroy 
some thousand acres of pine trees, many of them from two to three feet 
in diameter, and a hundred and fifty feet high ! Yet whoever passes 
along the high road from Georgetown to Charleston, in South Carolina, 
about twenty miles from the former place, can have striking and nielan- 
•choly proofs of this fact. In some places the whole woods, as far as 
you can see around you, are dead, stripped of the bark, their wintry- 
looking arms and bare trunks bleaching in the sun, and tumbling in 
ruins before every blast, presenting a frightful picture of desolation. 
And yet ignorance and prejudice stubbornly persist in directing their 
indio-nation against the bird now before us, the constant and mortal 
enemy of these very vermin, as if the hand that probed the wound, to 
extract its cause, should be equally detested with that which inflicted it ; 
or as if the thief-catcher should be confounded with the thief. Until 
some effectual preventive, or more complete mode of destruction, can be 
devised against these insects, and their larvae, I would humbly suggest 
the propriety of protecting, and receiving with proper feelings of grati- 
tude, the services of this and the whole tribe of Woodpeckers, letting the 
odium of guilt fall to its proper owners. 
In looking over the accounts given of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker 
by the naturalists of Europe, I find it asserted, that it inhabits from 
New Jersey to Mexico. I believe, however, that few of them are ever 
seen to the north of Virginia, and very few of them even in that state. 
The first 23lace I observed this bird at, when on my way to the south, 
was about twelve miles north of Wilmington, in North Carolina. There 
I found the bird from which the drawing of the figure in the plate was 
taken. This bird was only wounded slightly in the wing, and on being 
caught, uttered a loudlj'-reiterated, and most piteous note, exactly re- 
sembling the violent crying of a young child ; which terrified my horse 
so, as nearly to have cost me my life. It was distressing to hear it. I 
carried it with me in the chair, under cover, to Wilmington. In passing 
