WATERFOWL 
(I spare the reader the obvious classical tag), 
and this remarkable bird, first observed by 
Europeans in the early days of 1697, was 
quickly brought to Europe and figures in the 
earliest list of animals shown in the London 
Zoological Gardens. All these birds have a 
curious trick of hissing when angry, and 
this habit, perhaps because it is usually ac- 
companied by a deliberate stretching of the 
neck to its full length, is seriously regarded 
by some as conscious mimicry of snakes, a 
proposition that must be left to individual 
taste, but that strikes me as somewhat far- 
fetched. At any rate, it gives to these birds 
a formidable air, and, though the current 
belief in its power of breaking a man's arm 
with a blow from its wing is probably un- 
warranted, an angry swan, disturbed on its 
nest, is an awesome apparition of which I 
have twice taken hurried leave. On the first 
occasion, I had nothing but a valuable 
camera with me, and it was, in fact, after a 
futile attempt to photograph the bird on the 
nest that I was moved to seek the boat and 
push off from the little island in the Upper 
Thames on which it had its home. The other 
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