196 ANIMALS IN MENAGERIES. 



of fifteen or sixteen injured by the attack of one ; and 

 it must be a powerful man who is able to withstand an 

 encounter with an enraged male : even a horse has been 

 lamed by one of these furious birds, when feeding along 

 the edge of the water near which a female was sitting. 

 "^ At Pewsy, in Buckinghamshire/' continues the doctor, 

 " while a swan was on the nest, she observed a fox 

 swimming towards her from the opposite shore ; when 

 she darted into the water, and having kept the fox at 

 bay for a considerable time with her wings, at last 

 succeeded in drowning him, in the sight of several 

 spectators." * 



Swans, as before remarked, were greatly admired and 

 esteemed by our ancestors : they were then, however, 

 considered more an appendage to the establishment of 

 the aristocracy; for Edward IV. enacted, that no one, 

 possessing a freehold of less than the clear yearly value 

 of five marks, would be permitted to keep these birds. 

 Stealing swans that had been marked, or nicked, was 

 then a felony. This process was performed on the 

 bill of the bird with a hot iron ; and the number, di- 

 rection, and shape of these nicks indicated t-lie noble 

 family to which it belonged : three vertical marks cha~ 

 racterised such as belonged to the " King's Highness ;" 

 and an old manuscript is said to exist in one of the 

 libraries at Oxford, designating the swans' nicks of 304" 

 families. Mr. Weston, in a curious paper upon swansf, 

 conjectures, with every probability of reason, that the 

 Swan with two Necks, — a well known sign in London 

 and elsewhere, — is but a corruption of the swan with two 

 nicks, 



Abbotsbury, in Dorsetshire, was formerly, as it still 

 is, famous for the multitude of its swans : this is men- 

 tioned both by Dr. Malone, and by colonel Montagu :|:, 

 who says there were still between 600 and 700, although 

 formerly there were as many thousands. 



Swans are well known to be long-lived ; but much 



* Gen. Hist, of Birds, x. 222. f Archjeologia, xxi. 163. 



$ Orn. Diet, vol iii. or Supp. 



