S94 
ever found without them. He searches for them with a dexterity and intelligence, 
I may safely say, more than human ; he perceives by the exterior appearance of 
the bark where they lurk below ; when he is dubious he rattles vehemently on 
the outside with his bill, and his acute ear distinguishes the terrified vermin 
shrinking within to their inmost retreats, where his pointed and barbed tongue 
soon reaches them. The masses of bugs, caterpillars and other larvre which I 
have taken from the stomachs of these birds have often surprised me. These 
larvae, it should be remembered, feed not only on the buds and leaves and blos- 
soms, but on the very vegetable life of the tree, the albumem or newly forming 
bark and wood ; the consequence is, that the whole branches and the whole trees 
decay under the silent ravages of these destructive vermin. Witness the destruc- 
tion of many hundred acres of pine trees in north-eastern South Carolina, and the 
thousands of peach trees that decay every year from the same cause. Will any 
one say that taking half a dozen or half a hundred apples irom a tree, is equally 
ruinous with cutting it down, or that the services of a useful animal shall not be 
rewarded with a small portion of that which it has contributed to preserve. We 
are told in the benevolent language of Scripture, not to muzzle the mouth of the 
ox that treadeth out the corn, and why should not the same generous liberality be 
extended to this useful family of birds, which forms so powerful a phalanx against 
the inroads of many millions of destructive vermin ?” 
Such is the defense made for the woodpecker by a gentleman who spent a life- 
time in ob-erving birds and their habits. 
Rennie, in his Bird Architecture, thus speaks of another species of this bird : 
“ Mounted on the infected branch of an old apple tree, where insects have lodged 
their corroding and destructive brood in crevices between the bark and wood, he 
labors sometimes for half an hour incessantly at the same spot before he has suc- 
ceeded in dislodging and destroying them.” 
Mudie, in his Feathered Tribes, speaks of the woodpecker as follows : “It digs 
its way to the insects which are in the tree, with its beak, but uses its tongue in 
extracting them. This organ is extensible, barbed with reflected bristles, and also 
supplied with a glutinous fluid at the tip, so that whenever it can reach the prey, 
it draws out the larger as with a hook, and catches the smaller as with birdlime. 
The surface insects it catches with the tongue only, and the number of these that 
it does catch, and the rapidity with which they are taken, are both truly wonder- 
ful.” 
With these extracts, the woodpecker is left to the verdict of the House. 
Of the creepers, Wilson thus speaks: “The genus of creepers comprehends 
about thirty different species, many of which are richly adorned with gorgeous 
plumage, but like their congenial tribe the woodpeckers, few of them excel in 
