WALL-CREEPER. 519 
k Large slugs had been used to kill it, and it was so mangled . that 
Mr. Naylor could not determine the sex, and had great difficulty in 
making it all presentable; however, it was managed somehow, and 
remains in his possession still.” Following these remarks is a description 
of this specimen, which places its authentication beyond all question. 
The range of the Wall-Creeper is a somewhat wide one, extending 
across the Palearctic Region between lat. 30° and 50°, and just entering 
the limits of the Oriental Region in the Himalayas and China. Probably 
in all portions of its range it is a resident, only leaving the higher districts 
im winter to retire lower down the mountain. It breeds in nearly all the 
mountains of Central and Southern Europe, from the Sierra Nevada in 
Spain, the Pyrenees, the Swiss Alps, the Vosges Mountains, Italy, Sardinia, 
Greece, Asia Minor, to the Caucasus. In Asia it inhabits the mountainous 
portions of Turkestan, Afghanistan, Cashmere, the Himalayas, and the 
mountains of Kansu. It occasionally wanders into Northern Germany ; 
according to Riippell it has been found in Egypt and Abyssinia (the only 
_authority for the bird south of the Mediterranean) ; and it has been 
obtained in China in winter near Pekin and Foochow. Although the 
range of this bird issuch a wide one, it does not exhibit any great variation 
in colour, and skins from Samarkand in Turkestan are not any paler than 
those from the Pyrenees, although the climate of these two countries is, 
as has often been shown, well adapted to produce variations in the colour 
of the plumage. 
The haunts of the Wall-Creeper are amongst the mountains, in wild 
defiles and gorges, amongst the cliffs and rocks. During my visit to the 
Pyrenees in the winter of 1881-2 I made the acquaintance of this charming 
bird in the mountains near Pierrefitte. Near the highest point of the pass 
which we reached, and which must have been 2500 feet or more above the 
sea, we caught sight of the bird on the rocks. When we first saw it the 
sun was shining in our eyes, and all we could see was a bird flitting round 
an angle of the rocky cliff, and looking almost black, on its shadow side. 
The moment we saw the bird, however, we recognized it as the species 
we were in search of. The flitting, uncertain, bat-like or butterfly-like 
flight was most peculiar, and arrested the attention at once. The bird 
disappeared up the cliff on a wall of an old road above, Finding no trace 
of it beyond, we turned back and caught sight of it again flying down 
from the wall to the face of the cliff. As it flew it showed so much white 
on the wing that for a moment we thought it was a Lesser Spotted Wood- 
pecker ; but when it alighted on the face of the cliff head downward, and 
began to proceed in a somewhat zigzag course by a series of jerks, we 
should have been quite sure of the identity of the species even if the red 
on the wings had not been visible in the sunshine. We had scarcely shot 
the bird when we saw its mate sitting on a projecting spur of rock. It 
