212 ANATIDJI. 



White Swans, and agrees with both." Proc. ZooL Soc., 

 1847, p. 97. 



I am indebted to the kindness of Lord Braybrooke for 

 the following account of a female Swan, on the river at 

 Bishop's Stortford. This Swan was eighteen or nineteen 

 years old, had brought up many broods, and was highly 

 valued by the neighbours. She exhibited one of the most 

 remarkable instances of the powers of instinct that was 

 ever recorded. She was sitting on four or five eggs, and 

 was observed to be very busy in collecting weeds, grasses, 

 &c., to raise her nest ; a farming man was ordered to take 

 down half a load of haulm, with which she most indus- 

 triously raised her nest and the eggs two feet and a half ; 

 that very night there came down a tremendous fall of rain, 

 which flooded all the malt shops and did great damage. 

 Man made no preparation, the Bird* did. Instinct pre- 

 vailed over reason ; her eggs were above, and only just 

 above, the water. 



The young, when hatched, which is generally about the 

 end of May, are conducted to the water by the parent 

 birds, and are even said to be carried there : it is certain 

 that the cygnets are frequently carried on the back of the 

 female when she is sailing about in the water. This I 

 have witnessed on the Thames, and have seen the female, 

 by raising her leg, assist the cygnets in getting upon her 

 back. I thought it probable that carrying the young 

 might only be resorted to when the brood inhabited a 

 river, to save the young the labour of following the parent 

 against the stream ; but, during the summer of 1841, a 

 female Swan was frequently seen carrying her young on 

 the canal in St. James's Park, where there is no current 



* In the account of the Green Woodpecker, I have referred at vol. ii. 

 page 147, to the probable means by which birds and some other animals 

 become cognisant of approaching changes in the weather. 



