202 MEROPIDyE. 



bird from wliicli our fig-nrc was taken was shot in May 1 827, 

 by the bailiff of Robert Holford, Esq. at Kingsgate in the 

 Isle of Thanet. This specimen is now in the possession of 

 R. B. Hale, Esq. M.P. of Alderley, near Wootton-under- 

 Edge, in Gloucestershire, who obligingly allowed me the use 

 of it for this Work. One example of the Bee-eater is re- 

 corded by Rusticus to have been shot in a garden in the 

 town of Godalming in Surrey a few years back ; and a speci- 

 men was shot during the autumn of the present year, 1839, 

 at Christchurch, in Hampshire, for the knowledge of which I 

 am indebted to the kindness of my friend T. C. Heysham, 

 Esq. of Carlisle. 



In Dorsetshire, a Bee-eater was shot at Chidcock, and is 

 now preserved in the Bridport Museum. Three specimens 

 are recorded by Dr. Edward Moore as having been killed in 

 Devonshire. In Cornwall, according to Mr. Couch, four 

 specimens occurred in the parish of Madern in 1807, and a 

 flock of twelve visited the neighbourhood of Helston in 

 1828, of which eleven were shot. The only instance I am 

 aware of in which the Bee-eater has occurred in Ireland, is 

 that recorded by Mr. Vigors in the Zoological Journal as 

 having been killed on the sea-shore near Wexford, in the 

 wiuter of 1820, and preserved in the collection of James 

 Tardy, Esq. of Ranelagh, near Dublin. 



Four or five examples of this bird have been obtained in 

 the counties of Suffolk and Norfolk. One killed at Bcccles, 

 in the spring of 1825, is in the possession of the widow of the 

 Rev. H. F. Howman ; three others are recorded in the 

 fifteenth volume of the Transactions of the Linnean Society. 

 Mr. Thompson of Belfast has referred to one that was shot in 

 October 1832 in the Mull of Galloway; and Professor Nils- 

 son mentions that a male and female were killed in Sweden 

 in 1816. Montagu says, " It is nowhere so plentiful as in 

 the southern parts of Russia, particularly about the rivers 



