1-18 Letters, Extracts, Notices, S^c. 



exchanged for any foreign skin of a Roller ; there are also 

 no indications of its having been an escaped bird. 



Both Professor Newton and Mr. Dresser, who have seen 

 and liindly examined our Lincolnshire bird, agree that it is 

 undoubtedly C. indicus. 



Altogether about one hundred occurrences of the Roller 

 have been recorded in the British Isles, chiefly in the southern 

 and eastern counties. No doubt the greater number are still in 

 public or private collections and accessible for examination ; 

 it would be interesting to learn if any of them can be referred 

 to the Eastern form. 



The Roller was first noted as a visitor to our shores by 

 Sir Thomas Browne, who described a specimen obtained in 

 Norfolk in May 1664 ; he was not, however, aware o£ the 

 name of his bird. The passage having reference to it is 

 very remarkable, and will be found, quoted from Wilkin^s 

 edition of Browne's works, in Stevenson's ' Birds of Norfolk ' 

 (vol. i. pp. 312, 313). Although the description, compared 

 with the light of the present day, is somewhat imperfect, 

 theie cannot be any doubt that the bird was a Roller of 

 some sort, but it was clearly not C. garrulus ; what, then, 

 was it ? 



The matter has been referred to the highest possible 

 authority on Rollers — Mr. Dresser; he writes as follows : — 

 " I have carefully looked at the reference in Stevenson's 

 ' Birds of Norfolk,' and certainly the description does not 

 apply to Coracias garrulus in any stage of plumage. It 

 agrees to some extent with C. indicus-, but he says nothing 

 of the striation on the throat and breast, and his description 

 of the tail 'greenish,' 'the extremities of the outer tail- 

 feathers thereof white with an eye of green,' does not agree 

 with any Roller that I know." 



We certainly cannot expect the description of more than 

 two hundred years ago to be minutely accurate ; and I think 

 there is nothing in Sir Thomas Browne not mentioning the 

 throat-stripes on the bird (if it had any). The "eye of 

 green" in the tail raises a greater difficulty, but the ex- 

 pression may have meant only the green patch on the rectrices. 



