126 THE SWAir. 



any provocation. In these respects it is very different froA 

 the wild or Whistling Swan. 



This beautiful bird is as delicate in its appetites as it i^ 

 elegant in its form. Its chief food is corn, bread, herbi 

 growing in the water, and roots and seeds, which are found 

 near the margin. At the time of incubation it prepares a 

 nest in some retired part of the bank, and chiefly where 

 there is an inlet in the stream. This is composed of water 

 plants, long grass, and sticks : and the male and female 

 assist in forming it with great assiduity. The Swan laye 

 seven or eight eggs, white, one every other day, muck 

 larger than those of a goose, with a hard, and sometimes » 

 tuberous shell. It sits six weeks before its young are 

 excluded ; which are ash-coloured when they first leave the 

 shell, and for some months after. It is not a little dangerous 

 to approach the old ones, when their little family are feed- 

 ing round them. Their fears, as well as their pride, seem 

 to take the alarm, and when in danger, the old birds carry 

 off the young ones on their back. A female has been 

 known to attack and drown a fox, which was swimming 

 towards her nest ; they are able to throw down and trample 

 on youths of fifteen or sixteen ; and an old Swan can brea 

 the le^ of a man with a single stroke of its wing. 



