IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 
9 
chief of his tribe; and Nature seems to have designed him a 
distinguished characteristic in the superb carmine crest and 
bill of polished ivory with which she has ornamented him. 
Woodpeckers for the type, making another of the Golden -winged, and including 
in a third the very minute species which form Temminck’s genus Picumnus, 
but which, I believe, will be found to rank in a family somewhat different. 
Mr Swainson, again, in following out the views which he holds regarding the 
affinities of living beings, has formed five groups, — taking our present form as 
typical, under the title Ficus ; that of the Green Woodpecker, under Chrysop- 
tilus ; that of the Red-headed Woodpecker, as Melanerpes ; the Golden-wings, 
as Colaptes ; and Malacolophus as the soft-crested Brazilian and Indian species. 
Of these forms, the northern parts of America will contain only three : two 
we have had occasion already to remark upon ; and the third forms the 
subject of our author’s present description — the most powerful of the whole 
tribe, and shewing all the forms and peculiarities of the true Woodpecker 
developed to the utmost. 
The Pici are very numerous, and are distributed over the whole world, 
New Holland excepted ; America, however, including both continents, may 
be termed the land of Woodpeckers. Her vast and solitary forests afford 
abundance to satisfy their various wants, and furnish a secluded retirement 
from the inroads of cultivation. Next in number, I believe, India and her 
islands are best stored ; then Africa, and lastly, Europe. The numbers, 
however, are always greatest between the tropics, and generally diminish as we 
recede from and approach temperate or cold regions. They are mostly 
insectivorous ; a few species only feed occasionally on different fruits and 
berries. The various Coleoptera, that form their abodes in dead and decaying 
timber, and beneath their bark and moss, with their eggs and large larvae, form 
an essential part of their subsistence : for securing this prey, digging it out 
from their burrows in the wood, and the peculiar mode of life incident to such 
pursuits, they are most admirably adapted. The bill is strong and wedge- 
shaped ; the neck possesses great muscularity. The tongue — fitted by the 
curious construction of its muscles and the os hyoides, and lubricated with a 
viscous saliva, either gently to secure and draw in the weaker prey, or with 
great force and rapidity to dart out, and, it is said, to transfix the larger and 
more nimble insects — joined to the short legs and hooked scansorial claws, 
with the stiff, bent tail, are all provisions beautifully arranged for their wants. 
All the species are solitary, live in pairs only during the season of incuba- 
tion, or are met with in small flocks, the amount of the year’s brood, in the end 
of autumn, before they have separated. This solitary habit, and their haunts 
being generally gloomy and retired, has given rise to the opinion entertained 
by many, that the life of the Woodpecker was hard and laborious, dragged on 
in the same unvaried tract for one purpose, — the supply of food. It has 
