5 
Merriam on Birds of Lewis County , New York. 
end vegetable) and drink in abundance for an entire day ; and a 
single tree, favorably situated, may suffice for a whole season ! 
To explain the origin of this habit, at first thought so wonderful, 
is not difficult when we bear in mind the fact that all Woodpeckers 
are “fitted by nature ” for drilling holes in trees. Now let us sup- 
pose that one of the ancestors of this species, while pounding off a 
bit of dead bark from an apple-tree in search for the insects that 
might lurk beneath it, should, by chance, have struck his bill into 
an adjoining strip of sound bark. Seeing the crystal drops of sap 
slowly issuing from the wounded spot, he would naturally enough 
have tasted it, and, finding it agreeable to his palate, would be led 
to repeat the experiment. A little of the inner bark, partaking of 
the same flavor, might also be swallowed. Then, after the lapse of a 
few hours (during which digestion would be completed and the ap- 
petite again become manifest), is it strange that he should return 
to the spot where, a short time before, his hunger had been so 
easily satisfied 1 Here he would find himself surrounded by a 
swarm of insects, feeding upon the sap which had exuded during his 
absence, and from among their numbers an unexpected repast would 
be soon finished. Now, it is not at all likely that the bird would 
forgot this day’s experience, but, on the contrary, he would profit 
by it, and on the morrow, and day by day thereafter, would repeat 
the experiment, at first upon the same tree, and afterwards upon 
others of the same kind, till the habit would become firmly estab- 
lished. 
Though the bird’s attention was first attracted by the oozing sap, 
and his first return to the spot was doubtless due to his recollection 
of its agreeable flavor, yet I cannot but believe that the insects 
which he then found there served to keep up his interest in the 
place much more than the few drops of fluid swallowed beforehand, 
just to prepare the alimentary tract, as it were, for the solid food 
to come, — as we take a glass of Congress-water a half-hour before 
breakfast. Hence it is easy to see how a chance stroke of the bill 
sufficed to establish a habit by which the Yellow-bellied Woodpecker 
is always enabled, with a minimum amount of labor, to obtain an 
unlimited supply of the food most pleasing to its taste. And yet 
some people, who ought to know better, would still call this another 
example of “that curious instinct” which leads birds and other 
animals to do those things which are best adapted to their needs. 
Before the commencement of the breeding-season they are pre- 
