158 
DOWNY WOODPECKER. 
DOWNY WOODPECKER. — PICUS PUBESCENS. 
Plate IX. Fig. 4. 
Picus pubescens, Linn. Syst. i. 175, 15. — Gmel. Syst. i. 435. — Petit pic varie de 
Virginie, Buffon, vii. 76. — Smallest Woodpecker, Catesb. i. 21. — Arct. Zool. ii. 
No. 963 Little Woodpecker, Lath. Synop. ii. 573, 19. Id. Sup. 106. — Peak's 
Museum, No. 1986. 
DENDROCOPUS PUBESCENS. — SvtAiKsou. 
Picus pubescens, Bonap. Synop. p. 46. — Wagl. Syst. Av. Picus , No. 23. — Den- 
drocopus pubescens, North . Zool. ii. p. 307. 
This is the smallest of our Woodpeckers, * and so exactly 
resembles the former in its tints and markings, and in almost 
every thing except its diminutive size, that I wonder how it 
passed through the Count de Buffon’s hands without being 
branded as a 6C spurious race, degenerated by the influence of 
food, climate, or some unknown cause.” But, though it has 
escaped this infamy, charges of a much more heinous nature 
have been brought against it, not only by the writer above 
mentioned, but by the whole venerable body of zoologists in 
Europe, who have treated of its history, viz. that it is almost 
constantly boring and digging into apple trees ; and that it is 
the most destructive of its whole genus to the orchards. The 
* This species, as Wilson observes, is the smallest of the American Wood- 
peckers, and it will fill the place in that country which is occupied in Europe 
and Great Britain by the Picus minor, or Least Woodpecker ; unlike the latter, 
however, it is both abundant, and is familiar in its manners. 
Mr Swainson, in a note to the Northern Zoology , thinks that several American 
species are confounded under this. “ We have no doubt,” he says, “ that two, 
if not three, species of these little Woodpeckers, from different parts of North 
America, have been confounded under the common name of pubescens .” He 
proposes to distinguish them by the names of Dendrocopus medianus, inhabiting 
the middle parts of North America, chiefly different from D. pubescens in the 
greater portion of red on the hind head, relative length of the quills, and shape 
of the tail-feathers ; and Dendrocopus meridionalis, inhabiting Georgia, less 
than D. pubescens, and with the under plumage hair brown Ed. 
