POLISH SWAN. 115 



black, this distinction will not, I think, hold good. The 

 bird weighed thirteen pounds and three-quarters, but 

 was in poor condition,* the stomach containing only 

 coarse sand and grit with a few fibres of vegetable 

 matter. The trachea resembled that of the mute swan. 



The Hoveton bird is the last that has come under 

 my notice in this county, either in a semi-domesticated 

 state on our inland waters, or apparently wild on 

 the coast, but, considering how many of our Norfolk 

 specimens were identified by Yarrell himself as an- 

 swering in all particulars to his so-called Polish or 

 changeless swan, I shall scarcely be travelling beyond 

 the scope of this work if I give a brief resume of its 

 history, so far as it is at present known, and the chief 

 points at issue with regard to its sjpecific rank. 



Yarrell's attention seems to have been first directed 

 to it from the fact that the London dealers were in 

 the habit of receiving from the Baltic a large swan, 

 which they distinguished by the name of the Polish 

 swan, and two instances came under his notice, one 

 prior to and the other in the spring of 1836, of certain 

 tame swans having white cygnets, and which, in the adult 

 state, from the smallness of the black tubercle, the light 

 grey colour of the feet and legs, and other peculiarities, 

 appeared to him specifically distinct from the mute 

 swan. It was not, however, until the severe winter of 

 1837-8 that specimens, in all respects answering to the 

 Polish swans of the dealers, came under his notice in an 

 undoubtedly wild state, killed in the month of January, 

 1838, out of large flocks observed " pursuing a southern 



* The young male in the British Museum weighed twenty- 

 four and a quarter pounds, but Mr. Bartletfc has weighed examples 

 at the Zoological Gardens which turned the scale at twenty-seven 

 pounds. Of the Ingoldisthorpe birds, Mr. Southwell ascertained 

 the weight of the largest to be twenty-three and a-half pounds, 

 of the smallest seventeen pounds. 

 Q 2 



