WILD ANIMALS IN CAPTIVITY 



owners, if allowed the use of their perfect wings. I think 

 these facts ought to hold good in support of the opinion 

 that the common or mute swan is still undomesticated, 

 because however tame it may be, the tameness of the bird 

 is no argument that it is a domestic animal. 



It is quite true that the swans reared at Abbotsbury 

 Swannery, the property of Lord Ilch ester, where! have seen 

 two thousand adult birds and five or six hundred cygnets 

 within a mile and a half of the spot where they were 

 hatched, are allowed the full use of their wings. Out of 

 this large number many occasionally desert his lordship's 

 grounds. I have seen from two to three hundred 

 deserters on the coast, about Weymouth and the Isle of 

 Portland. 



It was well known to whom they belonged, as a large 

 number were missed from the swannery; it was in the 

 early spring of 1882, and a very large proportion of these 

 swans was lost. 



In 1878 a case was brought by the Society for the 

 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals before a full Bench at the 

 Slough Petty Sessions, against J. Abnett, waterman, of East 

 Moulsey, in the employ of the Vintners' Company, for 

 having cruelly ill-treated and tortured four swans by 

 cutting the mandibles with a knife and plucking feathers 

 from the wings. 



Inspector Nicholls, Superintendent Whitehouse, and a 

 Veterinary Surgeon went up the Thames on August 8,1877, 

 to see the swan-upping. Hamilton, the Queen's swan- 

 herd (now deceased), was marking the swans, and Hicks 

 and Abnett were assisting. After a considerable amount 

 of evidence for and against had been given, the Bench 

 dismissed the case, it being decided that the defendants 

 were not guilty of cruelty in carrying out a practice that 

 had been in use for centuries. 



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