256 ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



our first authority on the Anatida, who says that none of the 

 characters attributed to C. immutabilis are constant. 



Range in Great Britain. The Swan is now universally distri- 

 buted as a tame or semi-domesticated bird all over the three 

 kingdoms, but it has been introduced into many of its present 

 habitats. The species is said to have been first brought to 

 England by King Richard I. from Cyprus. At Lord Ilchester's 

 seat at Abbotsbury, near Weymouth in Dorsetshire, there is 

 the largest Swannery in this country. Specimens are often 

 shot in the winter, and these are generally supposed to be 

 escaped birds, but as Mr. Howard Saunders points out, they 

 may be thoroughly wild birds which have migrated to our 

 shores from the Continent, in many parts of which the Mute 

 Swan breeds in a thoroughly wild condition. 



Eange outside the British Islands. The present species breeds 

 in Southern Sweden, in Denmark and Germany, in Central 

 and Southern Russia, on the Lower Danube, the Black and 

 Caspian Seas, and as far east as Turkestan, Mongolia, and 

 Amurland. In winter it visits the Mediterranean, and has 

 been found at that season in North-western India. 



Habits. These are so well-known to every one of my readers 

 that but few words are necessary. Mr. Mansel-Pleydell gives 

 a very interesting account of the Abbotsbury Swannery in 

 his "Birds of Dorset," and he states that in 1865 there 

 were about 500 Swans on the estuary of the Fleet, and that 

 the number had increased to 1,400 birds in 1880, but in the 

 last-named year "the number became reduced by one-half, 

 owing to the Fleet becoming frozen over during an extremely 

 low spring-tide, when the water-plants growing at the bottom 

 became entangled in the ice, and were torn up by the roots at 

 the returning tide. Many of the Swans, thus suddenly de- 

 prived of their supply of food, either died of famine or 

 migrated, and reduced the number to about 800, which 

 average it now maintains." 



The food of the Mute Swan consists of aquatic plants, as 

 well as molluscs and insects, and it is said to devour frogs on 

 occasion, while there are not wanting many river-side fisher- 

 men, who declare that the Swans eat small fish and ova. 



The tame Swans nest earlier than wild ones, which do not 



