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India. While swimming, the mute swan is the most graceful of all its kin, being 

 the one in which alone the neck is bent in true ' ' swanlike ' ' form. Deriving its 

 name from the absence of any cry in the domestic race, it appears that wild birds 

 trumpet like the whooper. The nesting time during which the male bird dis- 

 plays extreme pugnacity takes place in May; the nests being generally built in 

 association, and the number of eggs in each varying from five to eight. The only 

 swannery in England is the one at Abbotsbury, near Weymouth, belonging to the 



C 



BI.ACK SWAN. 



Earl of Ilchester, where in 1880 there were upward of fourteen hundred birds. This 

 swannery, which dates from very ancient times, is situated on the estuary known as 

 the Fleet, of which the upper portion is brackish while the lower parts are com- 

 pletely salt. In the breeding season the nests cover a large area near the shore, and 

 while some of the young birds remain to increase the numbers in the swannery, 

 others wander out into the Fleet and become nearly wild. The severe winter of 



