THE SWANNERY AT ABBOTSBURY 73 



community in the Fleet. The total number is at 

 present 1002 ; but last year the cold and wet of the 

 summer were so fatal to the cygnets, that out of 800 

 hatched all died but one; 150 only were reared by 

 hand. The birds are still 500 less than the total 

 number of the flock before the year 1 8 8 1 . The frost 

 in that winter caused the greatest disasters from which 

 the swannery has suffered during the present generation. 

 A heavy north-west gale drove so much water out of 

 the Fleet, that when the frost came, the ice caught and 

 embedded the top of the grasses which grow on the 

 submarine fields below. As the water returned to its 

 normal level, the ice rose with it, and dragged all the 

 grass up by the roots, thus destroying over the whole 

 area the main food of the swans. For the next three 

 years the swans had to be fed with grain ; but at first 

 they refused to touch the new food, and one thousand 

 adult swans perished of starvation. Though the grass 

 has now grown again, the birds have never lost their 

 liking for the corn which they at first refused ; even 

 the severe winter of 1891 did not injure them. 



The history of this, which is not the most ancient 

 swannery in our country, but the only one surviving in 

 England, has been briefly summarized by Mr. Mansell 

 Pleydell, in his History of the Birds of Dorsetshire. 

 " There are records of a swannery," he writes, " long 

 previous to the Reformation ; the abbots of the neigh- 

 bouring monastery being its owners. At its dissolution, 

 Henry VIII. granted it to Giles Strangways, the ancestor 

 of the present owner (Lord Ilchester), who raised the 



