It is not merely the ability to appreciate sweet sounds that constitutes an ear for music.

The music of nature is not all sweet, but it is all good in its place. The voice of the peacock sounds horribly harsh close to your ear, but heard in its native woods and jungles it is not unpleasing, because it harmonises with the surrounding scene. The same may be said of the cries of parrots and monkeys; of the roar of the lion; of the voice of the thunder; and among artificial sounds, of the boom of great guns, without which the "bugle's warble" and the "trumpet's blare " would sound but tamely at a royal reception. But what I am just now thinking of is the wild note-laugh, shriek, or whatever you like to call it-of the woodpecker. It always gives me pleasure to hear it, for it tells me I am quite in the country, most probably in a woodland country, interspersed with pasture and arable, reclaimed from the wild, but bearing tokens here and there, by old single trees, of having once belonged to it: I could almost describe the sort of country with my eyes shut, if I only heard the note of the woodpecker.

It is of the common green woodpecker that I am now speaking. There are three other kinds reckoned among British birds: the

great black one (of which there is a stuffed specimen in Lord Derby's collection, at Knowsley, but which is nearly, if not quite, extinct in this country); the great spotted, and the lesser spotted; the second of these is not considered an uncommon bird; the last is more rarely seen, owing, perhaps, to its smaller size. But it is with the common woodpecker that we are all most acquainted; our friend in green, the forest ranger, the merry woodman whose little axe we so frequently hear; the weather-wise bird; the countryman's speaking barometer; Robin Hood's chanticleer; if, at least, the woodwele be the same bird-as some think-for we are told in the old ballad,

"The woodwele sang, and would not cease,
Sitting upon the spraye,

So loud, he wakened Robin Hood,
In the greenwood where he lay."

We must not expect an accurate knowledge of natural history in an ancient ballad poet. With us the woodpecker is perhaps never seen "sitting upon the spraye;" and if its notes attain the dignity of a song, they are usually uttered during the bird's short flight

from tree to tree; but, whatever bird the woodwele was, whether a woodpecker, or some species of thrush, there can be no doubt that Robin Hood must have made the acquaintance of the woodpecker in "merry Sherwood," and remarked his appropriate woodland attire; and no one can say that he did not borrow from his plumage his own uniform and that of his men-his own scarlet, from the conspicuous red patch on the bird's head, and his men's green, from the general colour of its body.

The woodpecker is a wonderful instance of design in the works of God. It has just those qualifications, and no others (for there is no lavish waste in creation), which fit the creature for the kind of life for which it was intended. It seems to have been made chiefly to feed on, and to keep in check, the insects which prey in the bark and wood of trees. This is the reason why we find it always in well-wooded districts. This is the reason why it has a powerful wedge-shaped bill, and a stout muscular body, to give force to its stroke, and at the same time to keep a firm hold on the tree. The muscles are the strongest where they are the most wanted,—

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on the legs and thighs, and in the neck. The muscles that move the short wings being small, the breast-bone to which they are attached is also small, and remarkably low. Hence the short, laboured, and undulating flight, like a succession of jerks, sufficient to carry the bird from tree to tree, and no more; hence its ability to press close to the treetrunk, which a bird with a high breast-bone could not do, thus throwing the centre of gravity forwards, and diminishing the tendency to fall backwards. Then the length and disposition of the toes, two before and two behind, furnished with strong talons: the downward direction of the tail-bones, and the strong, stiff tail-feathers, pressing against the tree and forming an additional support behind; the wonderful tongue, capable of being darted out and retracted with the speed of lightning, pointed and barbed, and supplied with a tenacious secretion, by glands through which it passes all these contrivances, which we can well understand, and doubtless others more delicate which are beyond our ken, have evidently one main object, that of supplying a powerful climbing-bird, to feed on the insects deeply hidden under the bark and in