I 
lewis’s woodpecker. 169 
The length of this was eleven inches and a half ; the 
back, wings, and tail were black, with a strong gloss 
of green ; upper part of the head, the same ; front, 
chin, and cheeks, beyond the eyes, a dark rich red ; 
round the neck passes a broad collar of white, which 
spreads over the breast, and looks as if the fibres of the 
feathers had been silvered : these feathers are also of a 
particular structure, the fibres being separate, and of a 
hair-like texture; belly, deep vermilion, and of the 
same strong hair-like feathers, intermixed with silvery 
ones ; vent, black ; legs and feet, dusky, inclining to 
greenish blue ; bill, dark horn colour. 
For a more particular, and doubtless a more correct 
account of this and the others, the reader is referred to 
General Clark’s History of the Expedition. The three 
birds I shall introduce, are but a small part of the valuable 
collection of new subjects in natural history, discovered 
and preserved, amidst a thousand dangers and difficulties 
by these two enterprizing travellers, whose intrepidity 
was only equalled by their discretion, and by their active 
and laborious pursuit of whatever might tend to render 
their journey useful to science and to their country. It 
was the request and particular wish of Captain Lewis, 
made to me in person, that I should make drawings of such 
of the feathered tribes as had been preserved, and were 
new. That brave soldier, that amiable and excellent 
man, over whose solitary grave in the wilderness I have 
since shed tears of affliction, having been cut off in the 
prime of his life, I hope I shall be pardoned for conse- 
crating this humble note to his memory, until a more 
able pen shall do better justice to the subject. 
