WITH A STANCHION GUN. 379 



you to catch the birds on their legs. Moreover, you 

 will have no difficulty in securing your cripples ; many 

 of which, in a high tide, escape to sea, while you are 

 popping off the others. 



HOOPERS, or WILD-SWANS. When the winter fur- 

 ther advances, and the birds are driven from Holland 

 and the Baltic to the more genial climate of the south, 

 and then followed by severe weather to the refuge they 

 have chosen, their last alternative is to leave the fens, 

 ponds, and decoys, and betake themselves to the sea- 

 coast, in order to avoid starvation. Then, and then 

 only, it is, that all this diversion may be enjoyed in 

 perfection, and without much trouble or difficulty. We 

 have then a variety of all kinds of wildfowl, and sport 

 for every shooter. And it is at such a time as this only, 

 we can expect to see the monarch of the tribe, the 

 hooper, or wild-swan. We had, during the hard winter 

 in 1823, a fine specimen of all this on the Hampshire 

 coast, the flats of which, off Keyhaven and Pennington, 

 were, for some weeks, covered with ice and snow. No- 

 thing could be more novel or beautiful than the appear- 

 ance of the harbour, which was one solid region of ice, 

 crowned with pyramids that had formed themselves of 

 the drifted snow, and frozen like Crystals ; and, on the 

 thaw, the harbour appeared like one huge floating island, 

 as the ice which covered it was carried off by the fall 

 of a high spring-tide. The effect of this huge body, 

 with the wild-swans sitting upon it, while it receded, 

 and looking as if formed by nature for the only inha- 

 bitants of such a dreary region, gave the spectator more 

 the idea of a voyage to the arctic circle, than the shore 

 of a habitable country. When the large bodies of ice 

 were carried off, and nothing remained but those of a 



