MUTE SWAN. 81 



on a piece of ornamental water, at Thickthorn, near 

 Norwicli.^ An old pair, having one surviving cygnet 

 of the previous year, hatched again, when the male swan, 

 as usual, commenced persecuting its former progeny, 

 until the owners had to remove the poor bird altogether. 

 On the same water were some Muscovy ducks, and the 

 male swan next made an attack upon the drake, but 

 found, in this case, that he had caught a tartar, for the 

 Muscovy suddenly sprang on the swan's back, and, safely 

 seated between its wings, pecked fiercely at his neck, 

 in spite of the frantic efibrts of the big bully to dislodge 

 him, and the drake had at length to be driven off. 



Even in their comparatively wild state, and when 

 finding their own hving, mute swans become very 

 weighty, the males especially. A remarkably fine bird 

 when "taken up," a few years back, on Surlingham 

 Broad, weighed thirty-three pounds ; and of an adult 

 pair, killed on Somerton Broad in 1871, the male 

 weighed thirty and the female eighteen pounds ; but 

 between twenty-five and thirty pounds is the ordinary 

 weight of a full grown cock swan. We can scarcely 

 wonder at this, or at their rapid growth, when we 

 observe old and young alike feeding almost inces- 

 santly throughout the day, with only brief intervals of 

 repose or of attention to the toilet, and with this charac- 

 teristic comes the question of their utility or otherwise, 

 more especially upon the shallow waters of our Norfolk 

 Broads. " There is no bird," writes Mr. Dixon, " com- 

 parable to the swan for clearing a pond of weeds,"t and 



* Communicated to the " Zoologist " for 1873 (p. 3^13), by Miss 

 Brightwell, through Dr. Gray. 



t In Beeton's " Book of Home Pets" it is stated that two pairs 

 of swans which, in 1796, were placed by the then Marquis of Exeter 

 upon a sheet of water over-run with weeds, effectually cleared it in 

 one year, and kept the weeds down afterwards, though previously, 

 for the same purpose, three men had been employed during six 

 months in the year. 



M 



