132 AQUATIC FOWL. 



Edward IV., it was enacted, that no "person who did not possess 

 a freehold of a clear, yearly value of five marks," was permitted 

 to keep any. 



Nothing can exceed the beauty and elegance with which the 

 swan rows itself along the water, throwing itself into the proudest 

 attitudes imaginable before the spectators ; and there is not, per- 

 haps, in all nature, a more lively or striking image of dignity and 

 grace. In the exhibition of its form, we see no broken or harsh 

 lines, no constrained or abrupt motions, but the roundest contour; 

 the eye wanders over every part with pleasure, and every part 

 takes new grace and new postures. It, however, appears rather 

 inelegant on land. They are powerful birds, and defend their 

 eggs and young with much avidity. A female perceiving a fox 

 swimming towards her nest, darted into the water, and succeeded 

 in drowning him, and returned to her nest in triumph. The flesh 

 of the young birds was formerly in much esteem, but the old are 

 hard and ill-tasted. They are said to live to the age of an hun- 

 dred years. Their nest is made of grass, among reeds : in Feb- 

 ruary they begin to lay, depositing an egg every other day until 

 there are six or eight. These occupy six weeks in hatching. Two 

 females have been known to associate for years together, hatching 

 and bringing, up their young from the same nest, and sitting by 

 turns, without quarrelling. The penalty for taking their eggs is 

 imprisonment for a year and a day, and a fine at the King's will. 

 They occasionally carry the young ones from the nest on their 

 back, and by permitting them to leave their situation there, to 

 gradually accustom them to the water. They feed on aquatic 

 plants, roots, frogs, and insects ; and it is said, sometimes on 

 fishes. The fact of the last assertion, some are inclined to doubt, 

 none having been found in their stomachs. The mute swan is 

 found wild in Russia and Siberia, but only in a domesticated state 

 in Great Britain. Its distinguishing characters are chiefly in its 

 bill, which is throughout of an orange red, with the exception 

 of the edges of the mandibles, the slight hook at the extremity, 

 the nostrils, and the naked spaces extending from the base towards 

 the eyes, all of which are black. A long protuberance, also of a 

 deep black, surmounts the base of the bill ; the iris is brown, and 

 the legs black, with a tinge of red. All the plumage, without ex- 

 ception, in the adult birds, is of the purest white. In length, the 

 full-grown male measures upwards of five feet, and more than 

 eight in the expanse of its wings, which reach, when closed, along 

 two-thirds of the tail. Its weight is usually about twenty pounds, 

 but it sometimes attains five-and-twenty or thirty ; and those in- 



