64 THE ALPS m JUNE. 



of cool air and warm sun, showing, by its peculiar habit of 

 getting up very late in the morning, that it objects to have the 

 one without the other. To those who have not seen it, it may 

 best be described as in shape almost exactly like our common 

 little Tree-creeper, the only other European representative of 

 the family, but larger, and instead of its cousin's sober brown 

 plumage, presenting such an exquisite contrast of colour as is 

 hardly to be found even among the fauna of -the tropics. Its head, 

 neck, and back, are soft ash-grey, and when its wings are closed 

 you would hardly distinguish it from the grey rock to which it 

 clings ; but in an instant, as it begins half to climb and half to 

 flutter from crevice to crevice, you will seetihe brilliant crimson of 

 its lesser quill-feathers standing out, not unlike the underwings of 

 a well-known moth, against that delicate grey. Its biU is long 

 and slender, but strange to say, it is without the long tongue, 

 that wonderful far-darter, with which the wood-peckers are 

 provided; so the insects which it seeks in the crevices have to 

 be rummaged for with the bill itself, and conveyed in some 

 mysterious manner to the tongue, which does not reach much 

 more than half way down it. Perhaps this may partly account 

 for a statement made to me hy Anderegg, and positively 

 insisted on by him', that the bird loses the end of its bill every 

 autumn, regaining it in the course of the winter. I am not in 

 a position either to accept or refute this story. Anderegg 

 declared that he had sent Professor Fatio specimens in order to 

 prove it ; but the Professor, who has studied the bird carefully, 

 has not, so far as I know, drawn attention to any such peculiarity. 

 I am inclined to think the truth may lie in the liability of the 



