GOLD-WINGED WOODPECKER. 
147 
of young Indian corn, and the wholesome and nourishing 
berries of the wild cherry, sour gum, and red cedar ? 
Let the reader turn to any living representative of the 
species, and say whether his looks he “ sad and melan- 
choly.” It is truly ridiculous and astonishing that 
such absurdities should escape the lips or pen of one so 
able to do justice to the respective merits of every 
species ; but Buffon had too often a favourite theory to 
prop up, that led him insensibly astray ; and so, forsooth, 
the whole family of woodpeckers must look sad, sour, 
and be miserable, to satisfy the caprice of a whimsical 
philosopher, who takes it into his head that they are, 
and ought to be so ! 
But the Count is not the only European who has 
misrepresented and traduced this beautiful bird. One 
has given him brown legs; # another a yellow neck ;f 
a third has declared him a cuckoo ; J and, in an English 
translation of Linnsgus’s System of Nature , lately pub- 
lished, he is characterized as follows : “ Body, striated 
with black and gray ; cheeks, red ; chin, black ; never 
climbs on trees which is just as correct as if, in 
describing the human species, we should say — skin 
striped with black and green ; cheeks, blue ; chin, 
orange ; never walks on foot, &c. The pages of natural 
history should resemble a faithful mirror, in which 
mankind may recognize the true images of the living 
originals ; instead of which, we find this department of 
them too often like the hazy and rough medium of 
wretched window-glass, through whose crooked protu- 
berances every thing appears so strangely distorted, 
that one scarcely knows their most intimate neighbours 
and acquaintances. 
The gold- winged woodpecker has the back and wings 
above of a dark umber, transversely marked with equi- 
distant streaks of black; upper part of the head, an 
iron gray; cheeks and parts surrounding the eyes, a 
* See Encyc. Brit . Art. Picus. f Latham. $ Klein. 
§ “ P. griseo nigroque transversim striatus” truncos 
arborum non scandit.” — Ind. Orn . vol. I, p. 242. 
