CHAPTER II. 
THE GREAT BLACK WOODPECKER 
(Picas martins). 
“ It was noon, and on flowers that languish’d around 
In silence repos’d the voluptuous bee; 
Every leaf was at rest, and I heard not a sound, 
But the Woodpecker tapping the hollow beech-tree.” 
Moore. 
“ It is easiest to succeed in attaining one’s object by 
the aid of the Great Black Woodpecker.* Watch in 
the spring, and seek to discover the hollow tree in which 
he builds: now, when the brooding time is past and he 
* As will be seen from the following note, the ‘‘object” here referred to was 
evidently the possession of some root or leaf to which magic powers were attributed, 
such as opening locks, &c. The first paragraph in this chapter would scarcely be 
intelligible to our readers, but that we have found a record of a similar legend in 
Messrs. Sharpe and Dresser’s ‘Birds of Europe,’ which, though told of the Green 
Woodpecker, is evidently identical with the tale mentioned in this chapter. We will 
give an extract at length. “ Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., sends the accompanying account 
of a curious vulgar superstition respecting the present bird:—‘ The following is 
from Aubrey’s ‘ Natural Remarques on the County of Wilts, 1685.’ He was a 
correspondent of Ray’s, who, in a letter dated, ‘ Black Notley, 8br 27, —91,’ alludes 
to this story as a fable :—‘ Sir Bennet Hoskins, Baronet, told me that his keeper at 
his parke, at Morehampton, in Herefordshire, did for experiment sake drive an iron 
naile thwert the hole of the Woodpecker’s nest, there being a tradition that the 
damme will bring some leaf to open it. He layed at the bottome of the tree a cleane 
sheete, and before many hours passed the nail came out, and he found a leafe lying 
by it on the sheete.’”— W. J. 
