286 FEET OF DUCKS. 



ducks do to the swimming- ones. Their tarsi are 

 shorter, the webs of their feet larger in proportion, 

 and the joints have rather more oblique motion. As 

 neither dive, the comparison of them is of course 

 made as surface swimmers ; and the attitude of the 

 swan upon the water has been a favourite theme with 

 poets and picturesque describers in all ages : and 

 the bird is stately as well as graceful, both w^hen it 

 . moves with closed wings and smooth plumage against 

 the breeze, and when it hoists sail, and takes the 

 wind in its raised wings, to aid or relieve the labour 

 of its feet. From its beauty, its size, and its tame- 

 ness, the swan is the best subject in which to study or 

 observe the action of surface swimming. All its evo- 

 lutions upon the water are worthy of notice, and its 

 style of doubling and of backing is particularly so. 



All those surface swimmings in which there is 

 -smooth motion, are, of course, made with the alternate 

 foot ; for, as the feet are considerably in the rear of 

 the centre of gravity, if the bird was to attempt leap- 

 ing on both without something to hold on, the hinder 

 part would be jerked out of the water, and the fore 

 part plimged into it, by which means the progress 

 would become both unseemly and fatiguing. When 

 alarm, or any other cause, impels these birds to more 

 rapid motion along the water than they can accom- 

 plish with the ordinary swimming motion, at its full 

 stretch, they take to the wing, and if they do not get 

 so high as merely to tip the water with their feet, as 

 the skimming birds do, they make the same flutter, 

 and generally utter painful cries, as barn-door fowls 

 do when forced to the wing. 



The swimming ducks are less upon the water than 

 swans, as a considerable part of their food is found 

 on laud, and they are incapable of reaching the 



