THE WILD SWAN 307 



a well-known loch in a wood, braved the muddy 

 traps of its bottom, waded to the artificial island 

 on which two swans had their home, ravished 

 it of its treasures in number three and beat a 

 triumphant retreat with the spoils of enterprise. 

 Next day when one of the eggs, blown and washed, 

 was placed in the spot which yearned for it ; when 

 the second was swapped for a knife with four 

 blades, a corkscrew, a toothpick, and an indis- 

 pensable apparatus for extracting stones from 

 horses' shoes (without which no boy can consider 

 himself equipped) ; and the third for a telescope 

 ingeniously disguised as a walking-stick that day 

 was a day of days. Then came the day of dread, 

 and many more of slowly diminishing fear. 



Those eggs were the produce of the so-called 

 mute swan, common on ornamental waters, a 

 creature of great beauty, but doubtfully entitled 

 to rank as, in a natural sense, a member of the 

 British fauna. Indeed, no swan can be called 

 unequivocally a native British bird ; but two, the 

 whooper and Bewick's swan, are classable among 

 our real, natural, and regular winter visitors. And 

 when people speak of having seen a wild swan 

 it may be taken for granted that in ninety-five 

 cases out of the hundred they mean the whooper, 

 which is the common wild swan. There are few 

 sights more curiously striking when first seen than 

 that of a wild swan on the wing, and my own first 

 sight of one is always associated with an idea 

 which it suggested. How the folk-lorists explain 

 the mediaeval idea that witches rode on broom- 

 sticks I do not know, but a swan on the wing 1 



