152 PICUS ERYTHROCEPHALUS. 
the late destruction of many hundred acres of pine 
trees, in the north-eastern parts of South Carolina;* 
and the thousands of peach trees that yearly decay 
from the same cause. Will any one say, that, taking 
half a dozen, or half a hundred, apples from a tree is 
equally ruinous with cutting it down ? or, that the 
services of a useful animal should not be rewarded with 
a small portion of that which it has contributed to 
preserve ? We are told, in the benevolent language of 
the Scriptures, not to muzzle the mouth of the ox that 
treadeth out the corn; and why should not the same 
generous liberality he extended to this useful family of 
birds, which forms so powerful a phalanx against the 
inroads of many millions of destructive vermin ? 
The red-headed woodpecker is, properly speaking, 
a bird of passage ; though, even in the eastern states, 
individuals are found during moderate winters, as well 
as in the states of New York and Pennsylvania ; in 
Carolina they are somewhat more numerous during 
that season, but not one-tenth of what are found in 
summer. They make their appearance in Pennsylvania 
about the 1st of May, and leave us about the middle of 
October. They inhabit from Canada to the Gulf of 
Mexico, and are also found on the western coast of 
North America. About the middle of May they begin 
to construct their nests, which, like the rest of the 
genus, they form in the body or large limbs of trees, 
taking in no materials, but smoothing it within to 
the proper shape and size. The’ female lays six eggs, 
of a pure white, marked, chiefly at the great end, 
with reddish spots; and the young make their first 
appearance about the 20th of June. During the first 
season the head and neck of the young birds are blackish 
gray, which has occasioned some European writers to 
mistake them for females ; the white on the wing is 
also spotted with black ; but in the succeeding spring 
* In one place, on a tract of two thousand acres of pine land, on 
the Sampit river, near Georgetown, at least ninety trees in every 
hundred were destroyed by this pernicious insect : a small, black 
winged bug, resembling the weevil, but somewhat larger. 
