NORTHERN THREE-TOED WOODPECKER. 41 
deposits, in holes formed in pine trees, four or five eggs 
of a brilliant whiteness ; its voice and habits are 
precisely the same as those of the spotted woodpeckers. 
Its food consists of insects and their larvae, and egg's, 
and sometimes seeds and berries. It is easily decoyed 
by imitating its voice. 
This species is eminently distinguished among the 
North American and European woodpeckers, by having 
only three toes, the inner hind toe being wanting, 
besides which it has other striking peculiarities, its bill 
being remarkably broad, and flattened, and its tarsi 
covered with feathers half their length : the tongue is, 
moreover, not cylindrical, but flat and serrated at the 
point, which conformation we have, however, observed 
in the three European spotted woodpeckers, and in the 
American Picus varius> villosus, pubescens, and querulus. 
In all these species the tongue is flat, with the margins 
projecting each side and serrated backwards, plain above, 
convex beneath, and acute at the tip. 
Linne, Brisson, and other anterior writers, confounded 
this northern bird with a tropical species, the southern 
three-toed woodpecker, Picus undulatus of Vieillot, 
which inhabits Guiana, and, though very rarely, Central 
America, but never so far north as the United States. 
It is the southern species of which Brisson has given 
us the description, while Linne described the present. 
It is nevertheless probable that he had the other in 
view when he observes, that in European specimens the 
crown was yellow, and in the American red, though, 
as he states, from Hudson’s Bay. The latter mistake 
was corrected by Latham, who, however, continued to 
consider the southern as no more than a variety, in 
which he was mistaken, since they are widely distinct; 
but as he had no opportunity of seeing specimens, he is 
not to be censured, especially as he directed the attention 
of naturalists to the subject. The merit of firmly 
establishing the two species is, we believe, due to 
Vieillot. Besides several other traits, the northern bird 
is always to be distinguished in every state of plumage 
from its southern analogue, by that curious character 
