18 WILD SWANS 



a straight neck. Seldom, indeed, may one take ex- 

 ception to the details in Mr. A. Thorburn's exquisite 

 bird-portraits, which are usually faultless in drawing 

 and colour, combining breadth of handling with 

 scrupulous fidelity in detail. Nevertheless, aliquando 

 dormitat. Evidently the plate representing the whooper 

 in Lord Lilford's British Birds has not been drawn 

 from life, but from stuffed specimens. The artist has 

 given the bird's neck those serpentine curves which I 

 have never seen it assume in life. Nor have I ever 

 seen a whooper puff out its wing-coverts and scapulars 

 in the manner so characteristic of the 'cob' or male 

 mute swan, whereby that bird so greatly enhances 

 its value as an ornamental water-fowl. Perhaps the 

 whooper indulges in that display in the courting season; 

 but, as it no longer breeds within the British Isles, the 

 ordinary citizen has no opportunity of admiring it. I 

 cannot admit, as some persons insist, that the mute 

 swan exceeds the whooper in beauty. It poses more 

 carefully ; like Lady Hamilton, this lady of the lake is 

 a trained Mistress of the Attitudes; but there is an 

 austere and dignified calm in the whooper's movements 

 that, in my view, renders it no whit inferior in grace 

 to the other. 



The black swan of Australia is pretty generally 

 domesticated in Britain, though it is said to be in 

 danger of extinction in its native waters. At best, it is 

 but a sorry caricature of the white species ; its sooty 

 plumage is the reverse of glossy, and requires all the 

 relief that can be had from its white flight feathers and 

 carmine bill. For many ages ' a black swan ' was a 



