ST. Helen's swan pit. 97 



When first brought to the Swannery the cygnets are 

 plentifully supplied with grass, as the best substitute for 

 the diet they have been accustomed to on the broads 

 and rivers, and by degrees they are led to feed on the 

 grain placed in the troughs, with a daily supply of grass 

 and vegetables grown specially for their use in an 

 adjoining garden. Each cygnet consumes nearly a 

 coomb of barley* in the process of fatting, and latterly 

 Mr. Simpson has found Indian corn, well soaked, an 

 excellent addition to the dietary. The cygnets, which 

 come to the Swannery the second week in August, 

 begin to be fat in October, and keep improving up to 

 December, but if kept beyond that time they fall off so 

 rapidly in condition that, according to Mr. Dixon, " a 

 bird weighing twenty-eight pounds before Christmas 

 has been known to shrink to seventeen or eighteen 

 pounds by the end of January, in spite of high feeding." 

 Male cygnets in prime condition, when thus fattened, 

 average about two or three and twenty pounds in weight, 

 in the feathers ; and when dressed for table the largest 

 would weigh about sixteen pounds, or from twelve to 

 fifteen pounds on an average.f Between the males and 

 females, when home fed, there is about the same pro- 



* In olden times the fine for stealing a swan was paid in wheat, 

 a custom thus referred to by Sir Edward Coke in " The Case of 

 Swans" : — " He who stealeth a swan in an open and common river, 

 lawfully marked, the same swan (if it may be) shall be hung 

 in a house by the beak, and he who stole it, shall, in recompence 

 thereof, give to the owner so much wheat that may cover all the 

 swan, by putting and turning the wheat upon the head of the swau 

 until the head of the swan be covered with the wheat." 



f The late Mr. Lombe, of Little Melton, is said to have had 

 two swans cooked for his dinner parties, to ensure, I presume, an 

 equal share of the prime parts to all his guests. The magnificent 

 old cock swan in the " Lombe collection," at the Norwich Museum, 

 which must have weighed considerably over thirty pounds, was 

 bred at Melton, but there is no record of its age. 

 o 



