30 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



in ducklings and cygnets, their forbears must have 

 been almost as wingless as the apteryx is to-day. It 

 is common knowledge that when fattening ducklings 

 for market, the birds should be killed while still in 

 the down, and when the exhausting process of feather- 

 making has scarcely begun. But it is probable that 

 it is the development of the wing bones quite as 

 much as of the feathers that for the time affects the 

 condition of the birds. In the case of some cygnets 

 which the writer had under close observation for 

 several months, the wings were quite rudimentary till 

 the birds were nearly three months old, and about 

 half-grown. When they did begin to develop, the 

 wing bones grew at an almost incredible rate ; in one 

 case each wing grew over five inches in length in 

 seven days. The wing feathers grew little until the 

 bones were almost fully grown ; then they too grew 

 very rapidly, and by the time this bird was five 

 months old they measured eight feet from the tip of 

 one wing to the tip of the other. Beautiful as is the 

 modern swan in either air or water, its slow rolling 

 gait on land is certainly not that of a champion 

 pedestrian like its cousin the goose ; yet if the life- 

 history of the individual is an epitome of the history 

 of the race, its ancestors must once have been num- 

 bered among the birds which could march. 



Mr. John Guille Millais, in his book on the African 

 veldt, tells how he once overtook an army of ants 

 on the march. 



" It was about as like a regiment on the march as 

 anything could possibly be," he writes. " As nearly 



