JANUARY 17 



hardened wretch who feels no shame for the sorrow 

 he has wrought. Better to content oneself with the 

 grandest display in British bird life a flight of wild 

 swans against a wintry sky. 



Our tame or quasi-tame mute swans being, as 

 aforesaid, left with full powers of flight, pass freely to 

 other lochs and to the seashore. Not infrequently 

 one gets shot by a shore-gunner and prized as a wild- 

 fowl ; and indeed it is not easy to distinguish between 

 the wild and domesticated birds when flying overhead 

 in uncertain light; but there can be no excuse for 

 mistaking one for the other when on the water. The 

 bill of the mute swan is orange red, shaped like a 

 duck's, with a black knob on the upper part between 

 the nostrils, but the bill of the whooper is shaped more 

 like that of a goose, and is citron-yellow for two -thirds 

 of its length from the base outwards, the remainder 

 being jet black. When the distance is too great or the 

 light too bad to enable one to verify this distinction, 

 there can be no doubt about the different attitude of 

 the two species in swimming. Two hundred years ago, 

 or thereby, Mr. Douglas of Fingland indited the lay 

 which, in virtue of the charming air to which it was 

 afterwards set, has melted hearts in all parts of the 

 world where English is spoken or sung, though, sad to 

 say, it failed to win him Annie Laurie for a bride. 

 When, in the second line of the second stanza, he 

 declares that 'her neck is like the swan/ he had in 

 mind, no doubt, the gracefully curving neck of the mute 

 swan, with which we are all familiar. The whooper's 

 carriage is quite different, the head being held aloft on 

 B 



