18 Mr. Selby on a new Species of Swan. 



attainments in various departments of Natural History, and his extensive 

 knowledge in comparative anatomy, I am indebted for much informa- 

 tion, and many acute remarks. I feel also great obligations to Mr. Geo. 

 Atkinson, of Carr's Hill, for the information he has afforded, and also 

 for his ready acquiescence in procuring, for comparison, the various parts 

 of the two original birds upon which Mr. Wingate formed his species. 

 Before proceeding to a comparative examination of the two species, or 

 to detail the peculiar characteristics, external and internal, which dis- 

 tinguish the Cygnus Bewickii from the Hooper (CygnusferusJ, it may 

 not be out of place to enter into a detail of the events which led to the 

 discovery, and to add such additional information as has since been ob- 

 tained regarding its natural history. In the winter of 1828 and 1829, 

 two Wild Swans, which afterwards proved male and female, one killed 

 near Haydon Bridge, and the other at Prestwick Carr, in this county, 

 wei'e, fortunately for science, sent to Mr. Wingate to be preserved. The 

 great inferiority of size they exhibited, as compared with the usual spe- 

 cimens of the adult Hooper, immediately struck him as remarkable ; and 

 further investigation discovered other marked distinctions in external 

 form. Upon dissection, his opinion of their being a new species became 

 confirmed, after observing the peculiar differences exhibited by these two 

 birds in the conformation of that essential organ, the trachea, and the 

 bronchial tubes, and also in the form of the sternum, as compared with 

 the corresponding parts in the common Hooper. In consequence of 

 the facts thus disclosed, Mr. Wingate shortly afterwards read a paper 

 before the members of the Natural History Society of Newcastle,* 

 stating the peculiarities of structure and form exhibited by those two 

 birds, and giving it as his opinion that they were such as to entitle 

 them to rank as a distinct and new species of Cygnus. The rare occur- 

 rence of the bird, which like its congener, the common Hooper, is with 

 us a winter visitant, and as such is seen but occasionally, and even then 

 in small numbers, and the want of further specimens that season pre- 

 vented him from extending or renewing the observations he had made 

 upon the two original birds, and consequently from establishing upon a 



* See No. I. page 1. 



