XIV 
HISTORY OF THE ROLLERS. 
It has been remarked as a singular fact that of all the bright-coloured birds which are met 
with in Southern Europe, the Roller appears to have been unknown to Aristotle and the ancient 
naturalists, and the earliest recognizable description is that given in 1555 by Gesner, who states that 
the species was known in the neighbourhood of Strasburg as the Roller, from its mode of flight. He 
adds that he remembered having seen it also near Bologna, in Italy ; but it is another singular fact 
that the bird seems to have been also unknown to his contemporary Belon, oriental traveller as he 
was, Aldrovandus, as usual, copied Gesner’s account, to which he had little or nothing to add; but 
Schwenckfeld, in 1603, gave a very good and recognizable description—evidently original—of the 
species under the name of Cornix ccemlea. 
I do not propose, however, to give a review of all the early literature, but, as I did in the 
Introduction to the Meropidm, to commence with Brisson, who in 1760 included in his ‘ Ornithologia ’ 
ten species of Rollers, but of these only four—viz. Galgulus {Coracias garrulus), Galgulus mindano- 
ensis {Coracias indicus), Galgulus angolensis {Coracias caudatus), and Galgulus indicus {Eurystomus 
orientalis) —appear to be true Rollers. He includes them all under the generic title of Galgulus and 
places them between Nucifraga and Icterus. 
Linnaeus, in the 12th edition of his Syst. Nat. (1766), flrst gave the generic name of Coracias 
and includes six species, viz. Coracias garrula Coracias indica^ Coracias caffra (1), Coracias orientalis 
{Eurystomus orientalis)., Coracias hengalensis {Coracias indicus), and Coracias caudata. 
P. L. S. Muller, in the Supplement to his ‘ Natursystem,’ p. 86 (1776), described two Rollers, 
viz. Coracias glaucurus {Eurystomus glaucurus) and Coracias leucoce'phalus, which may possibly be 
Coracias alyssinicus, but the description is too indefinite to enable me to say with certainty to which 
species it refers. He says “ it is rust-coloured above, blue below, white on the forehead, cheeks, and 
throat; the central tail-feathers are green and the outer ones black and very long; the feet are yellow 
spotted with white. This bird inhabits Senegal.” 
D’Aubenton in 1775, in the ‘ Planches Enluminees,’ figured the following Rollers, viz. Leptosoma 
discolor (pis. 587, 588), Coracias indicus (pi. 285), Coracias alyssinicus (pis. 326, 626), Coracias 
caudatus (pi, 88), Eurystomus glaucurus (pi. 501), and Eurystomus orientalis (pi. 619). 
In a rather scarce work (‘Tabula Afiinitatum Animalium etc.’), Johannes Hermann, in 1783, 
described as a Cuckoo, under the name of Cuculus discolor, the curiously aberrant Roller from 
Madagascar which now stands under the name of Leptosomus discolor, and in the same work 
he also gives the name of Coracias madagascariensis to the Roller described by P. L. S. Muller in 1776 
^ It may not be amiss to remark that the word Kopadas, used by Aristotle for the Cornish Chough, is of the masculine 
gender, and so it has been regarded by Brisson, P. L. S. Muller, and others; but when Linnaeus adopted it as a generic name in 
his 12th edition, he, whether by accident or design none can say, made it feminine, and his practise has been followed by many 
writers. In the 10th edition he had Coracias Garrulus, signifying that the second word was a substantive. Hence the discre¬ 
pancy to be observed (as in the case of Coracias garrulus or garrula) throughout this work. 
