222 duck. 



" the clear yearly value of five marks," was permitted to keep any.* 

 These birds sometimes live together in society, with perfect com- 

 placency. Two female Swans have, for three or four years each, 

 had a brood together, bringing up eleven young: they sat by turns, 

 without quarrelling ; and this is not the only instance which has 

 come under our observation. We see on the River Trent, and many 

 other waters, often great numbers, but the most noble Swannery is, 

 we believe, very near Abbotsbury, in Dorsetshire; about a quarter 

 of a mile to the west of which, in the open part of the Fleet, are to 

 be seen six or seven hundred, and formerly more than double that 

 number. The Royalty belonged anciently to the Abbot, since to 

 the Family of Strangeways, and now to the Earl of Ilchester.f 



The Swan is very pugnacious, and I have known full grown 

 boys of fifteen or sixteen, injured by the attack of one, and it must 

 be a powerful man who is able to withstand an encounter with an 

 enraged male; even a horse has been lamed by one of these furious 

 birds, when feeding too near the edge of the water, near which a Swan 

 was sitting. At Pewsy, in Buckinghamshire, whilst a Swan was on 

 the nest, she observed a fox swimming towards her from the opposite 

 shore, when she darted into the water, and having kept the fox at 

 bay for considerable time with her wings, at last succeeded in 

 drowning him, in the sight of several spectators. 



* But to make it felony the Swan must be marked by nicks, made with a red hot iron 

 on the bill, and varying in number, direction, and shape, according to the family they be- 

 longed to— e. g. three vertical nicks for the King's Highness ; and in one of the libraries 

 of Oxford is an old MS shewing the Swan nicks of 304 families, of England. See Gent. 

 Mag. Aug. 1808. 669. A Copy of the Ordinances respecting Swans on the River Witham, 

 in the County of Lincolnshire, may be seen in Archmol. xvi. p. 153, with three plates of 

 Swan nicks. It is observed by the Rev. Mr. Weston, that the name of the Swan with two 

 Necks, a well-known sign in London, might have originally meant, the Swan with two 

 Nicks ; and that the Swan hopping, so called, when the Swan companies annually made 

 progress up the Thames ; might have meant formerly Swan-npping.— Arch. xvi. 163. 



f Multitudes of the Tame Swan, seen by Dr. Maton, within two miles of Abbotsbury, 

 West. Tour. i. p. 68. At pi-esent much reduced, there not being more than 6 or 700, 

 formerly as many thousands.— Orn. Diet. Sup. 



