OF SELBOBNE. 
653 
LETTER VIII. 
TO ROBERT MARSHAM, ESQUIRE. 
UR two last letters seem as if tliej liad crossed 
each other on the road ; but whether they 
conversed when they met^ does not appear. 
If you have got the Certhia muraria, or 
true Wall-creeper, you are in possession of a 
very rare and curious bird. For in all my researches here 
at home for fifty years past, and in all the vast collections 
that I have seen in London, I have never met with it. No 
wonder that the great Mr. Willughby is not very copious 
on the subject, for he acknowledges fairly that he had not 
seen it ; though he supposes it may be found in this island.^ 
The best person I can refer you to is. Dr. John Antony 
Scopoli, a modern, elegant, foreign naturalist, born in the 
Tyrol, but late deceased in Pavia, where he was professor of 
Botany. This curious and accurate writer was in possession 
of one in his own museum , and gives the following descrip- 
tion of his specimen in his Annus primus historico-natu- 
ralis : — That its bill is somewhat longer than its shanks, 
slender, and somewhat bent ; that the tongue is bifid, and 
the feet consisting of three toes forward and one behind. 
Again he adds, that the upper part is cinereous, the throat 
whitish ; the abdomen, wings in part, tail and feet black ; the 
wings at their base, and the quill feathers at their base on one 
side reddish.'^ It was taken in Carniola. It is the size of 
* Willughby's observation is as follows : — " They say it is found in 
England; but we have not bad as yet the hap to meet with it." His 
description of the bird which he calls the WaU-creeper, or Spider- catcher, 
Picus murarius, Aldrov., is borrowed from Aldrovandus, and he places 
it after the Woodpeckers, and amongst the " Woodpeckers less properly 
60 called." (" Ornithology," Book II. p. 143, tab. 23.)— Ed. 
