lOO JUNGLE FOLK 



who declared that the Kaiser was quite the pleasantest 

 Emperor he had ever met, say that Cygnus olor is the 

 most agreeable of my swan acquaintances. This may 

 sound like flattery, like the fulsome praise of the 

 penny-a-line puffer. It is nothing of the kind. It is 

 barely complimentary. Among the blind the one-eyed 

 is king, unless, of course, he lives in a republic. " You 

 are the best of a very bad lot," were the encouraging 

 words with which a prize for arithmetic was once 

 handed to me. The mute swan is the most agreeable 

 of a bad-tempered clan. 



Swans are overrated birds. They cannot hold a 

 candle to their despised cousins, the geese. I am sorry 

 to have to say this, to thus shatter another idol of the 

 poets, to expose yet another of what the Babu would 

 call their ** bull cock " stories. I am the more sorry 

 as I am fully aware that this will bring down upon me 

 the thunderous wrath of the hterary critic, whose 

 devotion to the British bards is truly affecting. Let me, 

 therefore, by way of trimming, say that there is some 

 justification for idolising the swan. The bird is as 

 beautiful as the heroine in a three-volume novel. He 

 is dignified and stately, full of " placid beauty." 

 ** Proudly and slow he swims through the lake in the 

 evening stillness. No leaf, no wave, is moving : the 

 swan alone goes on his soHtary course, floating silently 

 like a bright water spirit. How dazzHngly his snowy 

 whiteness shines ! How majestically the undulating 

 neck rises and bends ! With what lightness and 

 freedom he glides buoyantly away, the pinions unfurled 

 like sails ! Each outline melts into the other ; every 



