30 Mr. Selby on a new Species of Swan. . 



which, I have before stated, alone was wanting ; this was the capture of 

 seven Swans, all of the new species, which were killed by a right and left 

 shot, upon Sweet-hope Lough, in November last, by the gamekeeper of 

 Sir John Trevelyan, of Wallington. Two of these sent to Newcastle 

 to be preserved exhibit the same striking peculiarities of outward form 

 and internal structure as those possessed by the two original birds ; and 

 although in neither of them has the trachea arrived at its full depth of 

 insertion in the cavity at the keel, still the cavity exists. The rest I am 

 informed by Mr. Trevelyan were similar, and very little difference 

 of size was observable among the whole of the seven birds. 



In addition to the above, I may mention another fine specimen of 

 this sort, lately presented to me, and killed in England last winter ; and 

 that I have in my collection a Swan, killed about 12 years ago upon Prest-. 

 wick Carr, which evidently belongs to this species, as it possesses all the 

 exterior characters, though the internal parts have been lost or neglected, 

 and which remained until the disclosure of the preceding facts, marked 

 as a small variety of the common Hooper. From the several specimens 

 thus ascertained to have been killed in England, it would appear that 

 this species has been in the habit of visiting our island for an indefinite 

 period, though probably not in such numbers as the common Hooper. 

 Its near affinity and close external resemblance to that species, have, no 

 doubt, occasioned it to be long confounded with it, and though always, 

 inferior in size to old specimens of the adult Hooper, such a difference 

 has been overlooked, or when noticed, attributed to accidental causes, 

 or arising from age, sex, or climate. Such seems to have been the 

 opinion of Montagu, for in his Supplement to the Ornithological Dic- 

 tionary, he describes as the trachea of the adult male Hooper, what 

 evidently must have belonged to a bird of the other species. This 

 opinion of Montagu's, I find, is also adverted to by Mr. Cooke, 

 in his description of the characters of the Whistling Swan, which he 

 published in 1823, where, after referring to the passage in Montagu, 

 he says, " this is a statement I have been anxious to establish or refute, 

 but without satisfactory success. In the male specimen before me, and 

 in many other male specimens which have been examined this season 



