All Woodpeckers are of value to the farmer. It has been shown that two-thirds to three-fourths of their food, consists of insects, chiefly noxious. Wood-boring beetles, both adults and larvae, are conspicuous, and with them are associated many caterpillers, mostly species that burrow into trees. Next in importance are the ants that live in decaying wood, all of which are sought by Woodpeckers and eaten in great quantities. Many ants are particularly harmful to timber, for if they find a small spot of decay in the vacant burrow of some wood-borers, they enlarge the hole, and as their colony is always on the increase, continue to eat away the wood until the whole trunk is honeycombed. Moreover, these insects are not accessible to other birds, and could pursue their career of destruction unmolested were it not that the Woodpeckers, with beaks and tongues especially fitted for such work, dig out and devour them. It is thus evident that the Woodpeckers are great conservators of forests. To them, more than to any other agency, we owe the preservation of timber from hordes of destructive insects. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker, living his almost solitary life in the vast and nearly impenetrable cypress swamps, at a height of forty and fifty feet from the ground, is rarely seen by man. The specimens we present in BIRDS are so nearly life-like that our readers need only imagine themselves in the dense forest of cypress to realize a very natural scene. THE IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. _Yap! Yap! Yap!_ As I am called the prince of Woodpeckers, I can, I suppose, shout just as loud as I like. Of course my cousin, the Red-bellied Woodpecker, will turn up his bill and say they only call me the prince because I am the largest of all the North American Woodpeckers. Well, I think that is reason enough, don't you? Some creatures who are not birds, have been called princes and kings for less than that--so I have heard. _Mr. Red-belly_ had a great deal to say about, and for himself, in BIRDS last month; he sent his picture, too. Pooh! he can't compare with me. I am said to be the most magnificent Woodpecker of the whole lot. My species is select, too, no matter if he does say the whole family of _Woodpeckers_ are common. We are considered rare birds. You don't find us in all localities, no indeed! You will have to travel to the far, far south to catch a glimpse of one of us magnificent fellows. Should you ever go way down on the Suwanee river, and walk "real easy" through the cypress forests you might get a peep at one of us. But we are wild and shy, and like to travel long distances through the day; no stay-at-home bodies among us.