152 PICUS ERYTHHOCEPIIALUS. 
the late destruction of many hundred acres of 
trees, in the north-eastern parts of South Cai'oliu®' 
and the thousands of peach trees that yearly 
from the same cause. Will any one say, that, takuV; 
half a dozen, or half a hundred, apples from a ti’C® 
equally ruinous with cutting it donm p or, that ta^ 
services of a useful animal should not be rewarded ''h 
a small portion of that which it has contributed 
preserve ? We arc told, in the l)enevolent languag® ® 
the Scriptures, not to muzzle the mouth of the ox th® 
treadeth out the corn ; and why should not the sa®*^ 
ffencrous liberality be extended to this useful family 
birds, which forms so powerful a phalanx against tw 
inroads of many millions of destructive vermin ? 
Tlie red-headed woodpecker is, properly speaki®?’ 
a bird of passage ; though, even in the eastern stat®^j 
individuals are found during moderate winters, as 
as in the states of New York and Pennsylvania;/® 
Carolina they are somewhat more numerous dun®# 
that season, but not one-tenth of what are found 1® 
smumer. They make their appearance in Pcnnsylva®'. 
about the 1st of May, and leave us about the middle <>1 
October. They inhabit from Canada to the Gulf ^ 
Mexico, and are also found on the western coast,*® 
North America. About the middle of May they beg'® 
to construct their nests, which, like the rest of h'® 
genus, they form in the body or large limbs of trC* 
taking in no materials, but smoothing it within t® 
the proper shajje and size. The female lays six eg?®' 
of a pure white, marked, chietiy at the great e,®®i 
with reddish spots; and the young make their 
appearance about the 20th of June. During the ht® 
season the head and neck of the young’ birds are blacki'®’ 
gray, which hits occasioned some European writei’s t" 
raistiikc them for females ; the white ou the wing. 
also spotted with black ; but in the succeeding spr'®!" 
* In one place, on a tract of two thousand acres of pine lamb ^ 
the Sanipit river, near Georgeto-ivn, at least ninety trees in evi^ r 
hundred were destroyed by this pernicious insect : "a small, hW 
'winged bug, resembling the weevil, but somewhat larger. 
