110 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
Abundant as were these birds upon the Thames, where Capello 
and de Najera saw them, there were plenty of other rivers 
which had them too, and very destructive they must have 
been to the fish, for Swans are great spawn eaters. The 
Swan continued to rise in favour in this country, and in 
Germany also, judging from the quotations given by a recent 
writer.* This was chiefly for its edible qualities, but the 
beauty of its white plumage was suggestive of purity of life, 
and heraldry claimed it for an emblem. The King’s swan- 
herd was a man of no little consequence, he was the magzster 
cygnorum, holding jurisdiction over the whole kingdom, the 
supervisor of all Swans, more particularly those on the Thames. 
In course of time, tame Swans, at any rate those on the Thames, 
came to be regarded as a sort of appanage of kings. Certain 
flocks were to be called royal, but besides this the King was 
legally entitled to put in a claim to Swans on other rivers, so 
that the Swan was, in a sense, like the Sturgeon, dubbed a 
royal perquisite. This being so, no subject could legally 
have property in one, even on his own stream, except by 
special grant, or by getting a licence from the Master swan- 
herd. Swan-marks, however, called in law Latin Cygninota— 
seem to have been freely granted, and these usually consisted 
of one or more indentations cut in the skin of the beak with 
a sharp knife.f These incisions or notches took a variety of 
shapes and forms—annulets, chevrons, crescents, swords or 
crosses—or, according to Yarrell, they might be some device 
produced from the heraldic arms of the owner.{ There are 
said to have been nine hundred such marks, which I suppose 
included a hundred for Norfolk, for at least that number 
might be reckoned for that county alone. It must have 
been difficult to avoid having duplicates among so many, 
or always to identify marks possessing a general resemblance, 
even when helped by a few holes punched in the webs of 
the feet, but perhaps this was not important where Swans 
belonged to different streams. 
The Swan as Food.—Attention has already been drawn 
(p. 109) to the estimation in which the Mute Swan was held 
* “ English and Folk-names of British Birds,” p. 253. 
; See Illustration given on p. 71. 
+ “ British Birds,” IIT., p. 123. 
