MUTE SWAN. 59 



that some of the birds, reared annually on our rivers 

 and broads, are left wholly unpinioned, and in hard 

 winters, when frozen out from their usual haunts, 

 betake themselves to the coast and are there shot by 

 the gunners, renders any proof of actual immigration 

 impossible; more especially as the same condition of 

 things exists in many parts of the continent. 



My remarks, then, on this beautiful and most in- 

 teresting species, will be directed solely to its habits, 

 in a semi-domesticated state, whether confined within 

 the limits of a pond or lake for ornamental purposes, or 

 finding its own subsistence on our rivers and broads, 

 where but for the effect of the pinioning knife it 

 would be ferce naturae in the fullest sense of the term. 

 The number of swans kept throughout the county by 

 private individuals and corporate bodies for with us 

 it is essentially a municipal as well as a Royal bird 

 must be very considerable, but from their general dis- 

 tribution it is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory 

 estimate. So long only as water is accessible, the 

 smallest pond* or moat contents them though the 



found the mute swan breeding in that locality, and procured ten 

 cygnets in their downy plumage. Mr. Gould, also (" Birds of 

 Great Britain"), remarks, " Mr. Dresser informs me he has himself 

 seen it in a wild state on the banks of the southern Danube, and 

 also on the island of Bornholm, in Denmark, whence he has eggs." 

 The latter by no means an unlikely locality from whence stragglers 

 might reach our shores in hard winters. 



* The Bev. E. S. Dixon, late rector of Intwood with Keswick, 

 in his work on " Ornamental and Domestic Poultry" (p. 29), gives 

 two instances in Norfolk of swans existing for some time, in the 

 same locality, with the most limited water supply. A single bird, 

 supposed to have escaped from Houghton, which frequented a 

 small pond at Bircham Tofts, and " kept " himself with but little 

 extraneous help, and a pair, which occupied for fifteen years a 

 small piece of water in front of Mr. Burroughes's house at Long 

 Stratton, adjoining the high road. 



