116 INSESSORES. CORACIAS. 



Of this genus only one species occurs in Europe. 



They are all remarkable for beauty of plumage, and the 

 prevailing colours are blues of different intensity, generally 

 associated with purples and brillant greens. They are wild 

 insociable birds, and live in the retirement of the thickest 

 forests. 



Their food principally consists of insects. In many spe- 

 cies the males are adorned by an elongation of the two outer 

 tail-feathers. 



The Rollers were arranged, by former systematists, in close 

 connection with the crows and other birds of the Linnean or- 

 der Piece ; and Mr VIGORS in a paper, " On the Arrange- 

 ment of the Genera of Birds," (published in the Zoological 

 Journal) has also made the genus Coracias the type of a 

 group in the family of Corvidce, although he has placed the 

 members of the genus Colaris, most closely related to it, not 

 only in a different family, but in a distinct and distant tribe. 

 From an examination of the several species belonging to the 

 genus, I have little hesitation in removing it from the Corvidse 

 (to which it bears only a relationship of analogy), and placing 

 it, together with Colaris, &c. in the tribe of Fissirostres, a 

 station also given to it by one of the most distinguished orni- 

 thologists of the present day *. I have provisionally placed 

 it, as an aberrant form, amongst the Meropidse, as a further 

 examination may evince the propriety of its transference to 

 the Halcyomda, belonging to the same tribe, and meeting 

 the Meropidae at the other extremity of the circle. 



* See Mr SWAINSON'S remarks on the Corvida, in the Second Volume 

 of " Northern Zoology," page 289. 



