LETTEES FEOM ALABAMA. 
161 
SO much for their own personal importance, as on 
account of the visitors they are in the habit of 
receiving. The first is, I believe, the wild cherry 
of the north { Cerasus Virginiana)^ but whose small 
black fruit seems, either from partial cultivation, or 
from the influence of a sunnier sky, to be much 
ameliorated. Though still of no mention as a fruit, 
it is sweet and luscious, deprived of that bitterness 
which makes the northern berry so unpalatable. 
To the taste of the smaller Woodpeckers, however, 
it would seem to be highly agreeable ; so irresistible 
is the temptation, that not only our familiar ac- 
quaintance, the Red-headed {Pirns erythrocephalus), 
pays particular attentions to its clusters, but even 
those shy and retiring species, the Red-bellied, and 
the Yellow-bellied (P. Carolinus^ and P. varius), 
are almost daily to be seen on the higher branches, 
particularly in the early morning. All these birds 
have the head more or less marked with brilliant 
metallic red, scarlet in the last two, but in the first 
more inclined to crimson : in either case making 
' excusable the mistake of the Irish emigrant, who 
on his first sight of one of these birds engaged in 
“ tapping the hollow beech-tree,” exclaimed in 
unfeigned astonishment, — “ Arrah, Paddy ! see the 
craythur, batin’ his face to pieces agin a tree, an’ 
his head all in a gore o’ blood ! ” 
The appropriation, to certain genera of animals, 
of particular colours, generally following more or 
less closely a definite arrangement, is not the least 
interesting nor the least curious of the very many 
branches into which the vast science of natural 
history ramifies. The glossy black spotted with 
white, of the back and wings, and the bright red 
of the crown, in the genus before us, as well as the 
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