THE MUTE SWAN. 387 



surface for the light grains which float, and then submerge 

 their heads in search of that which has sunk. Should any 

 Carp (that fresh-water Fox) be occupants of the same lake, it 

 will be found that they soon learn the accustomed hours of 

 feeding, and will come to take their share along with their 

 feathered friends. But it is cruel to locate a pair of Swans, 

 for the sake of their beauty, in a new-made piece of water, 

 whose banks and bottom are as barren and bare as the inside 

 of a hand-basin. A load or two of water-weeds should have 

 been thrown in, the previous spring, to propagate themselves 

 and afford pasturage. Sometimes, after an old-established 

 sheet has been cleansed at a great expense, it is thought that 

 Swans would now look well there, and they are forthwith 

 turned in, to be starved ; whereas they would thankfully have 

 undertaken the cleansing task for nothing. Swan-food exists 

 in proportion to the shallowness and foulness, not to the extent 

 and clearness of the water. A yard of margin is worth a mile 

 of deep stream ; one muddy Norfolk broad, with its oozy banks, 

 labyrinthine creeks, and its forests of rushes, reeds, and sedges, 

 is better, in this respect, than all "the blue rushing of the 

 arrowy Khone," or the whole azure expanse of the brilliant 

 Lake of Geneva. 



In confined waters, Swans require a liberal supply of food 

 in the autumn, when the weeds run short. It should be re- 

 membered that at this season they have to supply themselves 

 with a new suit of clothes, as well as to maintain their daily 

 strength. If they have not been taught to eat corn, and have 

 not acquired a notion of grazing, they will perish from starva- 

 tion as undoubtedly as a canary-bird neglected in its cage. 

 Young birds are apt to be fanciful or stupid, and have not 

 sense enough to come on the bank and eat grass, or pick up 

 the threshed corn that may be thrown down to them. Some- 

 times they may be tempted with a lock of unthreshed barley 

 or oats, thrown, straw and all, into the water, which they will 



