FAMILY V. 
SAGITTILINGUES, Illiger* 
GENUS VI. — PICUS, Linnieus. 
38 . PICUS PRINCIPALIS , LINNiEUS. — IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 
WILSON, PL. XXIX. FIG. I. MALE. • — EDINBURGH COLLEGE 
MUSEUM. 
This majestic and formidable species, in strength and 
magnitude, stands at the head of the whole class of 
woodpeckers hitherto discovered. He may he called 
the king or 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. His eye is brilliant and 
daring ; and his whole frame so admirably adapted for 
his mode of life, and method of procuring subsistence, 
as to impress on the mind of the examiner the most 
reverential ideas of the Creator. His manners have 
also a dignity in them superior to the common herd of 
woodpeckers. Trees, shrubbery, orchards, rails, fence 
posts, and old prostrate logs, are alike interesting to 
those, in their humble and indefatigable search for prey ; 
but the royal hunter now before us, scorns the humility 
of such situations* and seeks the most towering trees 
of the forest ; seeming particularly attached to those 
prodigious cypress swamps, whose crowded giant sons 
stretch their bare and blasted or moss-hung arms mid- 
way to the skies. In these almost inaccessible recesses, 
amid ruinous piles of impending timber, his trumpet- 
