the food contained therein, having a cover which lifts up by hinges, and so forms a lid, to keep out rats and sparrows, and open only in front. Many persons, however, feed their Swans by simply throwing the corn into shallow water. They will skim the surface for the light grains which float, and then submerge their heads in search of that which has sunk. Should any Carp (that fresh water Fox) be occupants of the same lake, it will be found that they soon learn the accustomed hours of feeding, and will come to take their share along with their feathered friends. But it is cruel to locate a pair of Swans, for the sake of their beauty, in a new-made piece of water whose banks and bottom are as barren and bare as the inside of a hand-basin. A load or two of water-weeds should have been thrown in, the previous spring, to propagate themselves and afford pasturage. Sometimes after an old established sheet has been cleansed at a great expense, it is thought that Swans would now look well there, and they are forthwith turned in, to be starved; whereas they would thankfully have undertaken the cleansing task for nothing. Swan-food exists in proportion to the shallowness and foulness, not to the extent and clearness of the water. A yard of margin is worth a mile of deep stream; one muddy Norfolk broad, with its oozy banks, labyrinthine creeks, and its forests of rushes, reeds, and sedges is better, in this respect, than all "the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone," or the whole azure expanse of the brilliant Lake of Geneva.

In confined waters Swans require a liberal supply of food in the autumn, when the weeds run short. It should be remembered that at this season they have to supply themselves with a new suit of clothes, as well as to maintain their daily strength. If they have not been taught to eat corn, and have not acquired a notion of grazing, they will perish from starvation as undoubtedly as a canary bird neglected in its cage. Young birds are apt to be fanciful or stupid, and have not sense enough to come on the bank and eat grass, or pick up the

threshed corn that may be thrown down to them. Sometimes they may be tempted with a lock of unthreshed barley or oats, thrown, straw and all, into the water, which they will instinctively lay hold of and devour. Cygnets which have been previously put up to fatten, will give little or no trouble in this respect, besides the advantage of being accustomed to the near approach of a keeper.

In one week I lost two Swans, a Cygnet, and a yearold bird, from the consequences, I fear, of a few days' short diet at moulting time. Suspecting foul play from some ill-natured person, I caused a post-mortem examination to be made of that which died last; but, in a literal sense, nothing could be found. The poor thing was empty and emaciated, though it had been fed with corn two or three days before, and though it had only to ascend a bank a foot high to enjoy a plentiful feast of good grass. It had been seen sailing about in apparent health and spirits the previous evening, and my mind is not yet quite satisfied about the subject. The following remarks may perhaps afford some clue in similar cases.

"Swans wandering by night, in search of watercresses chiefly, are always in danger from the different vermin which prey upon poultry and game-weasels, stoats, polecats, &c. And Swans thus destroyed exhibit no wounds or marks upon the body; but upon the head and neck, where, on a minute inspection, the wounds are discovered through which the vermin have sucked the life-blood, leaving the bulk so little affected that the feathers are unruffled. The wounds appear scarcely the size of a pin's head, but are generally above half-an-inch deep. Geese and Turkeys are also liable to be destroyed by these nocturnal marauders, which, like all beasts of prey, sleep throughout the day."-Moubray on Poultry, 8th Edition, p. 128.

One would doubt the fact of so large a bird as the Swan falling a victim to a wretched little weasel. But a relation of mine had a pair of Canada Geese, birds

little inferior in size to the Swan, which in the breeding season were suffered to shift their quarters from the farmyard, their usual abode, to a neighbouring broad, where he had rights. After a time one bird returned home alone, and its missing mate was at length discovered, halfdecomposed, on a sedgy islet in the broad in such a position as to indicate that it had been surprised and killed by one of the larger weasels, a stoat or a polecat.

Considerable difference of opinion has been entertained respecting the diet of the Swan; some supposing it to be exclusively vegetable, others believing that fish enter largely into it. My own observations tend to prove that a very considerable part of their nutriment is obtained from minute insects and molluscs. The sluggish, weedy waters, where Swans thrive best, abound with such creatures; and the Whale is a sufficient example that the size of the prey is no index to the magnitude of the creatures that subsist on it. Swans fall off in condition very rapidly in autumn, however liberally they are supplied with corn, immediately that the temperature drops to any extent, and the minor inhabitants of the pools disappear into their winter retreats. A very small fish might now and then not come amiss to them, and spawn would be greedily devoured. A Swan must be considerably more destructive in this respect than the poor little Water Ouzel, which is so bitterly persecuted along the salmonstreams of Scotland, for the alleged injury it does to the ova of the fish. The seeds of grasses, and the soft starchy parts of aquatic plants, are no doubt a considerable portion of the daily ration of the Swan. It seems to prefer sloppy, half-decayed vegetation, to that which is fresh and crisp. Spare garden-stuff, spinach, and such like, thrown out for them, is liked all the better for having lain soaking at least twenty-four hours, that is, in such time as it has become sodden and attacked by small fresh-water shell-fish. If their mode of feeding is watched, it will be found to countenance the popular belief that many birds live "by suction;" they appear to

suck down the pappy food, which pleases them best, rather than fairly to crop and swallow it.

Consequently, there is no bird in the least comparable to the Swan as an agent for clearing a pond of weeds. It does not, however, eat all weeds indiscriminately; it seems scarcely to touch the water-lilies, white and yellow, except perhaps in a very young state, though it no doubt checks their increase by seed. These, when too numerous, may be uprooted by means of a long pole armed with an iron claw, and used either from the shore or from a boat once detached from their moorings they may be floated away. Swans seem to prefer, first, what we call the lower forms of vegetation, the Confervæ and the Characeæ, then the Callitricha Aquatica, or Water Starwort, and the long list of Potamogetons, or Pond-weeds; the rhizomata of all sorts of reeds, rushes, arrow-heads, &c., are greedily torn up and devoured. A lake of half an acre in extent is quite large enough (with the assistance of corn, refuse vegetables, and grass-clippings, when the weeds run short) not only to maintain a pair of Swans, but to supply an acceptable lot of fat Cygnets every autumn. Swans have been kept successfully in a much more limited space. But in one instance within my own knowledge, where the extent of water is not a quarter of an acre, the annual brood, as soon as they entered the pond in company with their parents, were devoured by some enormous pet pike that equally shared their owner's favour-a hint that one cannot breed Swans and fresh-water sharks at the same time and place.

The Swan, consuming the submerged refuse of plants, is thus the scavenger of the waters, as the Hyæna and the Vulture are of the land. In such countries as Holland, and still more about the deltas of large rivers in the south of Europe and western Asia, their influence must be very beneficial. Indeed, we are compelled to believe that they have been bountifully created to fulfil this office of cleansing the half-stagnant water courses. Unlike the old dragons that could exhale a pestilence and infect a whole

district with their breath, these winged tenants of the marsh swallow many a plague and fever up. Not a little miasma has travelled harmlessly down the throats of Swans. They can fatten on poisons, although ignorant of King Mithridates, his antidote.

A curious instance of the animal diet of the Swan once occurred to myself. The common brown shrimp, it is well known, inhabits, and thrives in, waters less strongly impregnated with salt than the open sea, which is not the case with several other species; and I was desirous of trying whether it were possible to stock with them a piece of water absolutely fresh. A quantity were procured and brought home in a fish-kettle of tidal river-water; but the heat of the weather at the time was much against the success of the experiment. On arriving at their journey's end, the great majority were dead. They were all, however, turned out together: a few swam off apparently unaffected by the unwonted element, and were never seen or heard of afterwards; the rest sank to the bottom; when one of my Swans, expecting her feed of corn, sailed up, and began feasting on the dead shrimps, crushing them in her bill before she swallowed them, and appearing much to relish her meal.

The difficulty there sometimes is in getting Swans to eat corn, or to graze like Geese, shows that either diet is with them an acquired taste.

At the proper age and season they will show a disposition to breed, if well fed, although restricted within comparatively narrow limits. As soon as they have decidedly fixed upon the spot for their nest, it will be an assistance to take them two or three barrowfuls of coarse litter. Sedges and rushes are the best, with perhaps a few sticks, which they can arrange at their own pleasure. The number of eggs laid will vary from five or six to ten, but the number of Cygnets hatched seems, like the fall of lambs, to depend much upon the season and the weather of the few preceding months. One year the three pairs of Swans nearest to me had each a brood of nine