COMMON CREEPER. 513 
though it has evidently retreated southward as the cold in the Arctic 
regions has increased. In Western Europe it appears to range to about 
63° N. lat., m Eastern Europe to about lat. 60°. In Siberia it has not 
been recorded from further north than lat. 57°; whilst on the American 
continent, where the severity of the Arctic climate is not tempered by a 
gulf-stream, it does not range beyond lat. 50°. In thé south it frequents 
the pine- and cedar-forests of Algeria, and has once been recorded from 
Tangiers. It is also found in Asia Minor, Transcaucasia, Turkestan, 
Cashmere, North China, and Japan. In America it is found as far south 
as Guatemala. With such a wide distribution considerable local variation 
must be expected; and consequently the Common Creeper has been divided 
into several species, varying in colour. These variations, however, appear 
to me climatic rather than geographical. The palest form appears to be 
that found in Central Siberia. Examples from the Amoor are slightly 
more rufous, but not quite so much so as examples from North China, 
Japan, and Asia Minor, which appear to approach the eastern North- 
American form. In western North America the Creepers are still more 
rufous, and are undistinguishable from British and Central European 
examples, the more rufous individuals of which are again scarcely distin- 
guishable from the palest examples from Mexico and Cashmere, which 
latter are tropical forms, much darker on the upper parts, much more 
rufous on the rump, and somewhat darker on the flanks. Modern orni- 
thologists, fettered by the binomial system, and biased by the notion of 
geographical regions, are obliged to be alternately lumpers and splitters, 
according to the hemisphere with which they have to deal, instead of simply 
recording the facts of nature. In the present case the Old-world tropical 
variety of the Common Creeper has been called Certhia nipalensis, and has 
been separated from the New-world tropical variety, which has been called 
Certhia mexicana, whilst the far more distinct semiarctic forms Certhia 
familiaris and Certhia scandulaca have been confounded together, because 
they are both Palzarctic. The Mexican variety of the Common Creeper 
may, however, be usually distinguished from the Himalayan variety by 
having the grey of the underparts extending further on the breast. 
There are other local variations in the Common Creeper ; for example, 
the Creepers of South Europe in the Pyrenees and the Alps are much 
paler than those found in the valleys ; and in all parts of its distribution 
small examples occur, generally having the hind claw somewhat shorter 
than usual, which has given rise to the term C. brachydacty/a, which many 
continental ornithologists consider a good species : these latter birds are 
probably immature. In Turkestan and India there are two near allies of 
the Common Creeper which appear to have become good species, although 
each of them is divisible into two subspecies. C. himalayana from the 
Himalayas, and its long-billed pale form C. teniura from Turkestan, 
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