THE POLISH SWAN. 23 



straw and made the nest himself, then sat on it for some days before the 

 female, as if to induce her to follow his example. After she did begin 

 to sit, he sometimes relieved her by taking her place. When the nest 

 was approached he came up and stood beside her. One morning that 

 I stood by, he placed himself under her wings lest the egg might be 

 disturbed : the wings of both birds continued trembling all the while 

 that I remained." In the preceding year my friend remarked : — 

 " The swan beginning to sit on two eggs on the 2nd May ; the first 

 appearance of the young on the 13th June ; moulting ' of the old birds 

 commencing early in July.' " 



Late in September, I was once amused at the occupation of a 

 pair of old swans at the Falls. They were seated in the furrow of a 

 potato-field, busily engaged delving their bills into the sides of the 

 ridges where potatoes were exposed to view, bringing them out and 

 eating them. 



It is a common practice for the old female swan to carry her cygnets 

 on her back on the calmest and stillest ponds, as well as under other 

 circumstances (see Yarrell, 'Brit. Birds') ; and beautiful do the inno- 

 cent, lively little creatures appear, with their fine bright eyes, when 

 thus under the expansive snowy canopy of their parent's wings. 

 Though not a songster, the swan has, as remarked by Yarrell, " a 

 soft low voice, which may often be heard in spring, and when moving 

 about with its young." 



Waterton, in the second series of his ' Essays on Natural History,' 

 gives a very pleasing description of the domestic swan, concluding with 

 a most graphic narrative of the last illness and death of a favourite 

 one at Walton Hall. 



The Polish Swan, Cygnus immutabilis, Yarr., is not known to 

 have visited Ireland in a wild state, as it has the eastern shores of Eng- 

 land. It was first distinguished as a species there in 1838 ; — and 

 has not yet been obtained in Scotland (Jard., Macg.). In August 

 1843, a bird-preserver in Dublin showed me a cygnet of a whitish- 

 grey colour, which puzzled him very much. He stated that it was 

 the produce of a pair of swans purchased by a gentleman (living in the 

 neighbourhood of Dublin) a few years previously, in London, and 

 whose cygnets were always " white," instead of the ordinary grey 

 colour. It was the young of this bird. I was pleased to hear such 

 an account of it from one to whom the species was unknown even by 



