66 
NORTHERN THREE-TOED WOODPECKER. 
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 whence Vieillot took 
his highly characteristic name, (Picus hirsutus, Pic a pieds vetus ) 
the feathered tarsi, a peculiarity which this alone possesses to the 
same extent. The plumage is an uniform black above in the 
adult, with the top of the head yellow in the male; while the 
southern, whose tarsi are naked, is black undulated with white, 
the male having the sinciput red. It is worthy of remark, that 
the three-toed group, found in Arctic, and in tropical America, 
should have no representative in the intermediate countries. 
Although these are the only three-toed Woodpeckers noted as 
such in the books, several others are known to exist, some of 
which, long since discovered, have through inadvertence, or want 
