Species IX. PICUS TORQVATUS. 
LEWIS'S WOODPECKER. 
[Plate XX. Fig. 3.] 
Of this very beautiful, and singularly marked, species, I am unable 
to give any farther account than as relates to its external appearance. 
Several skins of this species were preserved ; all of which I examined 
with care ; and found little or no difference among them, either in the 
tints or disposition of the colors. 
The length of this was eleven inches and a half ; the back, wings, and 
tail, were black, with a strong gloss of green ; upper part of the head 
the same ; front, chin, and cheeks, beyond the eyes, a dark rich red ; 
round the neck passes a broad collar of white, which spreads over the 
breast, and looks as if the fibres of the feathers had been silvered ; these 
feathers are also of a particular structure, the fibres being separate, and 
of a hair-like texture ; belly deep vermilion, and of the same strong 
hair-like feathers, intermixed with silvery ones ; vent black ; legs and 
feet dusky, inclining to greenish blue ; bill dark horn color. 
For a more particular, and, doubtless, a more correct account of this, 
and the two preceding species,* the reader is referred to General Clark's 
History of the Expedition, now preparing for the press. The three 
birds I have here introduced, are but a, small part of the valuable col- 
lection of new subjects in natural history, discovered, and preserved, 
amidst a thousand dangers and difficulties, by those two enterprising 
travellers, whose intrepidity was only equalled by their discretion, and 
by their active and laborious pursuit of whatever might tend to render 
their journey useful to science and to their country. It was the request, 
and particular wish, of Captain Lewis, made to me in person, that I 
should make drawings of such of the feathered tribes as had been pre- 
served, and were new. That brave soldier, that amiable and excellent 
man, over whose solitary grave in the wilderness I have since shed tears 
of affliction, having been cut off in the prime of his life, I hope I shall 
be pardoned for consecrating this humble note to his memory, until a 
more able pen shall do better justice to the subject. 
* Wilson here alludes to Clark's Crow, and the Louisiana Tanager, both of which 
are figured in the same plate with Lewis's Woodpecker. 
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