MUTE SWAN. 83 



as I am informed by the Rev. T. J. Blofeld, it is 

 pulled up by his swans in large quantities ; and Rich 

 informs me that at Surlingham a pair of swans, which 

 had strayed from the Broad to a marsh-dyke near his 

 house filled with this weed, cleared the channel very 

 effectually in a short time. To grebes and divers, seeking 

 their finny prey beneath the surface of the water, its 

 endless ramifications must be particularly objectionable, 

 but, as proved both on Hoveton and Wroxham Broads, 

 its abundance is a great attraction to coots and to some 

 species of wild fowl, especially widgeon and tufted ducks, 

 and like them, the swans, no doubt, feed not only on 

 the weed itself but on the minute mollusca that swarm 

 on its matted fibres. Were it, however, not gathered 

 at all by the swans as an article of food but merely torn 

 up in the search for other roots and plants, I think even 

 Mr. Frank Buckland might cease to denounce these birds 

 as " spawn-eating brutes," in consideration of the eminent 

 services they would even thus render to man. It is a 

 disputed point I know whether swans do eat the spawn 

 of our river fish, but though I have no direct evidence 

 of this by dissection, the testimony of our broadmen is so 

 far confirmatory of the watchers on the Thames,* that 



* In " Land and Water " for November 30th, 1872, is a copy of 

 a petition recently forwarded by the officers of the Great Marlow 

 Thames Angling Association to the Lord Chamberlain, praying for 

 a reduction in the number of the Queen's swans on the Thames, and 

 similar applications have been made to the Dyers' and Vintners' 

 Companies, on the ground of the injury done to the fishing by 

 these birds in the consumption of fish spawn. Mr. Francis Francis 

 supports this petition in the "Field" for November 23rd, 1872, 

 and the same subject has been referred to in that journal on many 

 previous occasions. At the present time the number of swans on 

 the Thames are said to be " Her Majesty the Queen, 397 ; Dyers' 

 Company, 67 ; Vintners' Company, 55 ; total, 519. A few years 

 ago the number belonging to the Queen was 500." At the great 

 swannery belonging to the Earl of Ilchester, at Abbotsbury, 



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