NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 123 



February ; and in January they refuse their food and will not fat 

 any more. They weigh, with their feathers, from twenty to 

 thirty pounds. They are exceedingly good eating ; the taste 

 being between hare and wild duck, with a dash of venison. 

 The soup made of the giblets is exceedingly good. 



How TO COOK A SWAN. 



Take three pounds of beef, beat fine in a mortar, 

 Put it into the swan that is, when you've caught her. 

 Some pepper, salt, mace, some nutmeg, an onion, 

 Will heighten the flavour in gourmand's opinion. 

 Then tie it up tight with a small piece of tape, 

 That the gravy and other things may not escape. 

 A meal paste (rather stiff) should be laid on the breast, 

 And some whitey brown paper should cover the rest. 

 Fifteen minutes at least, ere the swan you take down, 

 Pull the paste off the bird that the breast may get brown. 



THE GRAVY. 



To a gravy of beef (good and strong) I opine, 

 You'll be right if you add half a pint of port wine, 

 Pour this through the swan yes, quite through the belly, 

 Then serve the whole up with some hot currant jelly. 

 N.B. The swan must not be skinned. 



MOLKS, p. 167. The following is a quotation from my "Log- 

 book of a Fisherman and Zoologist": " After dinner we went 

 round the sweetstuff and toy booths in the street, and the vicar, my 

 brother-in-law, the Rev. H. Gordon, of Harting, Petersfield, Hants, 

 introduced me to a merchant of gingerbread-nuts, who was a great 

 authority on moles. He tends cows for a contractor who keeps 

 a great many of these animals to make concentrated milk for the 

 navy. The moles are of great service ; they eat up the worms 

 which eat the grass, and wherever the moles have been after- 

 wards the grass grows there very luxuriantly. When the moles 

 have eaten all the grubs and worms in a certain space, they 

 migrate to another, and repeat their gratuitous work. The grass 

 where the moles have been is always the best for the cows. I 

 think it would puzzle even Mr. Darwin, or even the Right Hon. 

 G. Ward Hunt, First Lord of the Admiralty, to connect the 

 health of British seamen with the poor despised moles, if they 

 did not know the fauts." 



M. Carl Vogt relates an instance of a landed proprietor in 

 France who destroyed every mole upon his property. The 

 next season his fields were ravaged with wire-worms, and his 

 crops totally destroyed. He then purchased moles of his 

 neighbours and preserved them as his best friends." 



In August 1 875, when at Mr. Burr's, at Aldermaston Park, 

 Reading, I endeavoured to smoke some moles out of their runs. 



