118 BIKDS OF NORFOLK. 



Again, althougli our mute swans, wlien unpinioned, ■will 

 betake themselves to the coast in hard weather, and are 

 there killed, with whoopers and Bewick's swans, this in 

 no way accounts for such large flocks of swans as 

 appeared on our coasts in 1838, all, as Yarrell remarks, 

 " distmct from our mute swan," and with cygnets, " so 

 far as observed, of a pure white colour, like the parent 

 birds." Besides the absence, however, of any proof that 

 albinism occurs in the mute swan in its purely wild 

 state, I know of no conclusive evidence of its occurrence 

 on our coast, as a migrant from such parts of the Con- 

 tinent, as it is still known to frequent ;* though the 

 probabihty is great that it does so occur, only passing 

 unnoticed from the distinctions, if any, between G. olor 

 in a state of nature, and as we know it after years of 

 domestication, being as yet undescribed. This point 

 will, no doubt, be fully cleared up by Mr. Dresser when 

 treating of the continental species of swans in his ex- 

 haustive work on the " Birds of Europe," and the result 

 of such comparisons may materially assist in solving 

 the problem, what is Cygnus ivn'mutabilis? whose geogra- 

 phical distributionf seems almost as little known at the 

 present time as it was to Yarrell in 1838. 



The most probable solution of the difficulty I have 

 yet met with is one recently suggested by Mr. J. H. 

 Gurney, and concurred in by no less an authority on 

 such matters than Mr. A. D. Bartlett, — it is the 



* See antea p. 58 for evidence of C olor breeding in a wild 

 state on tlie Danube and on the Danisli island of Bornliolm. 

 Dr. Tristram, also, in a paper on "the Ornithology of Palestine " 

 (" Ibis," 1868, p. 327), speaks of C. olor as " common in Greece 

 and Egypt." 



f Lord Lilford, in a paper on " Birds observed in the Ionian 

 Islands, &c." (" Ibis," 1860, p. 361) describes Cygnus ivimutabilis 

 as "not uncommon in Corfu and Epirus, in severe winters. 

 Several were shot in the island in January, 1858." 



