SPECIES 9. PIC US TORQU^TUS, 
LEWIS’S WOODPECKER. 
[Plate XX. — Fig. 3.] 
Peale’s Museum, J^o. 2020. 
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 colours. 
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 colour. 
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 collection of new subjects in natural 
history, discovered, and preserved, amidst a thousand dangers 
and difficulties, by those two enterprising travellers, whose in- 
trepidity was only equalled by their discretion, and by their ac- 
tive and laborious pursuit of whatever might tend to render 
* Wilson here alludes to Clark’s Crow, and the Louisiana Tanag'er, both of 
which are figru’ed in the same plate with Lewis’s Woodpecker. 
