BEE-EATER. 219 



country of Aragon. Polydore Roux includes them among 

 the Birds of Provence, and a few every year frequent the 

 southern parts of Switzerland, France, and Germany. 

 The bird from which our figure was taken was shot in May 



1827, by the bailiff of Robert Holford, Esq. at Kingsgate 

 in the Isle of Thanet. This specimen is now in the pos- 

 session of R. B. Hale, Esq. M.P. of Alderly, near Woot- 

 ton-under-Edge, in Gloucestershire, who obligingly allowed 

 me the use of it for this Work. One example of the Bee- 

 eater is recorded by Rusticus to have been shot in a 

 garden in the town of Godalming in Surrey a few years 

 back ; and a specimen 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 

 winter 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 countries of Suffolk and Norfolk. One killed at 

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

 widow of the Rev. H. F. Howman ; three others are re- 

 corded in the fifteenth volume of the Transactions of the 

 Linnean Society. Mr. Thompson of Belfast has referred to 



