GOLD- WINGED WOODPECKER. 
49 
covered with tufts of recumbent hairs, or small feathers ; its 
tongue is round, worm-shaped, flattened towards the tip, 
pointed, and furnished with minute barbs ; it is also long, 
missile, and can be instantaneously protruded to an uncommon 
distance. The os hybides, or internal parts of the tongue, 
like those of its tribe, is a substance for strength and elasticity 
resembling whalebone, divided into two branches, each the 
thickness of a knitting needle, that pass, one on each side of 
the neck, to the hind head, where they unite, and run up 
along the skull in a groove, covered with a thin membrane, 
or sheath; descend into the upper mandible by the right side’ 
of the right nostril, and reach to within half an inch of 
the point of the bill, to which they are attached by another 
extremely elastic membrane, that yields when the tongue is 
thrown out, and contracts as it is retracted. In the other 
Woodpeckers we behold the same apparatus, differing a little 
in different species. In some, these cartilaginous substances 
reach only to the top of the cranium ; in others, they reach to 
the nostril ; and in one species they are wound round the 
bone of the right eye, which projects considerably more than 
the left for its accommodation. 
The tongue of the Gold-wfinged Woodpecker, like the others, 
is also supplied with a viscid fluid, secreted by two glands 
that lie under the ear on each side, and are at least five times 
larger in this species than in any other of its size ; with this 
the tongue is continually moistened, so that every small insect 
it touches instantly adheres to it. The tail, in its strength 
and pointedness, as well as the feet and claws, prove that the 
bird was designed for climbing ; and in fact I have scarcely 
ever seen it on a tree five minutes at a time without climbing ; 
hopping not only upward and downward, but spirally ; pursuing 
and playing with its fellow in this manner round the body of 
the tree. I have also seen them a hundred times alight on 
the trunk of the tree, though they more frequently alight on 
the branches ; but that they climb, construct like nests, lay 
the same number and the like coloured eggs, and have the 
VOL. i. 
D 
