PREFACE. 
It is now some years since I began to take a special interest in tire Bee-eaters and Rollers (indeed 
long before I bad completed my work on the ‘ Birds of Europe ’), and I then commenced to make 
a collection of tbe birds belonging to these families, though not with the object of writing a Mono- 
graph of them, as I understood that my friend Mr. D. G. Elliot purposed doing so. However, as 
Mr. Elliot has not carried out what I understood to be his intention, and as I found that it would 
take years before I could gather sufficient material to commence a work on the birds of the Eastern 
Palsearctic Region, as a sequel to my e Birds of Europe,’ I resolved to undertake the present 
Monograph so as to employ my spare time in the meanwhile ; and I trust that the result of my 
labours may be such as to merit the approbation of my fellow-ornithologists, and that the present 
work may prove the means of obtaining more information respecting several species of Bee-eaters 
about which, as will be seen by the following pages, but very little is known. I have to acknowledge 
with deep appreciation the willing assistance rendered to me by many fellow-naturalists during 
the progress of the present work ; and I am especially indebted to Captain G. E. Shelley for the 
loan of his entire collection of 3 feropidce, as also to Captain R. G. Wardlaw Ramsay for the loan 
of the Bee-eaters belonging to the Tweeddale collection. When I first determined to write this 
Monograph the late Mr. W. A. Rorbes undertook to furnish the notes on the anatomy and 
osteology of the Bee-eaters and Rollers ; but owing to his premature death, before he had done 
more than just commence the task, I was deprived of the valuable assistance he would thus 
have given me. However, his successor in the post of Prosector to the Zoological Society, 
Mr. Prank E. Beddard, has most kindly come forward and volunteered to undertake this portion 
of the work, and to him I am indebted for the valuable notes on this subject that are embodied 
in the Introduction. I may add that I have now in preparation a Monograph of the Rollers, 
which I trust ere long to complete (and, indeed, all the Plates have already been drawn on stone, 
printed off, and coloured), which will form a companion volume to the present Monograph. 
Topclyffe Grange, Farnborough, Kent. 
28 December, 1885. 
II. E. BRESSER. 
