ROLLER, a very beautiful bird so called from its way of occasionally rolling or turning over in its flight,4 some-what after the fashion of a Tumbler-Pigeon. It is the Coracias garrulus of ornithology, and is widely though not very numerously spread over Europe and Western Asia in summer, breeding so far to the northward as the middle of Sweden, but retiring to winter in Africa. It occurs almost every year in some part or other of the British Islands, from Cornwall to the Shetlands, while it has visited Ireland several times, and is even recorded from St. Kilda. But it is only as a wanderer that it comes hither, since there is no evidence of its having ever attempted to breed in Great Britain ; and indeed its conspicuous appear-ance - for it is nearly as big as a Daw and very brightly coloured - would forbid its being ever allowed to escape the gun of the always ready murderers of stray birds. Except the back, scapulars, and tertials, which are bright reddish-brown, the plumage of both sexes is almost entirely blue - of various shades, front pale turquoise to dark ultra-marine - tinted in parts with green. The bird seems to be purely insectivorous. The genus Coracias, for a long while placed by systematists among the Crows, has really no affinity whatever to them, and is now properly considered to belong to the heterogeneous group of Birds in this work called Picari.T (ORNITHOLOGY, V01. EViii. p. 41), in which it forms the type of the Family Coraciidx; and its alliance to the Bee-eaters, Meropidx, and KING-FISHERS (v01. xiv. p. 81), Alcedinidiv, is very evident. Some eight other species of the genus have been recognized, one of which, C. leueo-cephalus or C. abyssinus, is said to have occurred in Scotland. India has two species, C. indicus and C. affinis, of which thousands upon thousands are annually destroyed to supply the demand for gaudy feathers to bedizen ladies' dresses. One species, C. temmincki, seems to be peculiar to Celebes and the neighbouring islands, but otherwise the rest are natives of the Ethiopian or Indian Regions. Allied to Caracias is the genus Eurystomus with some half dozen species, of similar distribution, but one of them, E. pacificus, has a wider range, for it inhabits Australia and reaches Tasmania. Madagascar has four or five very remarkable forms which have often been considered to belong to the Family Coraciidw ; and, according to Professor A. Milne-Edwards, no doubt should exist on that point. Yet if any may be entertained it is in regard to one of them, Lepto-somus discolor, which on account of its zygodactylous feet some authorities place among the Cuculidx, while others have considered it the type of a distinct Family Lepto-somatidx. The genera Bra,chypteracias and Atelornis pre-sent fewer structural differences from the Rollers, and perhaps may be rightly placed with them ; but the species of the latter have long tarsi, and are believed to be of terrestrial habit, which Rollers generally certainly are not. These very curious and in some respects very interesting forms, which are peculiar to Madagascar, are admirably described and illustrated by a series of twenty plates in the great work of MM. Grandidier and A. Milne-Edwards on that island (Oiseaux, pp. 223-250), while the whole Family C oraciidx is the subject of a monograph by Mr Dresser, as a companion volume to his monograph on the Meropidx. (A. N.)