126 AGE, HABITS. 



domesticated. They are occasionally to be met with 

 in the London markets of Leadenhall and Newgate, 

 the asking price at present five shillings each. Their 

 skins only are used. Fifteen wild swans were shot, 

 January, 1830, by one man, in Shoreham harbour, 

 and sold to the furriers at five shillings each. Their 

 flesh is no longer in request as food, with the excep- 

 tion of cygnets, or young swans, which are still fat- 

 tened, at Norwich particularly, for the Christmas 

 feast, and command the price of one guinea each. 



The swan feeds like the goose, and has the same 

 familiarity with its keepers, kindly arid eagerly receiv- 

 ing bread which is offered, although it is a bird of 

 courage equal to its apparent pride, and both the 

 male and female are extremely dangerous to approach 

 during incubation, or whilst their brood is young, as 

 they have sufficient muscular force to break a man's 

 arm with a stroke of their wing. They both labour 

 hard in forming a nest of water plants, long grass and 

 sticks, generally in some retired part or inlet of the 

 bank of the stream or piece of water on which they 

 are kept. The hen begins to lay in February, pro- 

 ducing an egg every other day, until she has depo- 

 sited seven or eight, on which she sits six weeks, 

 although Buffon says it is nearly two months before 

 the young are extruded. Swans' eggs are much larger 

 than those of a goose, white, and with a hard, and some- 

 time stuberous shell. The cygnets are ash-coloured 

 when they first quit the shell, and for some months 

 after; indeed, they do not change their colour, nor 

 begin to moult their plumage, until twelve months 



