In the Neighbourhood of Salisbury. 



91 



which are well within reach of our district, and which it would well 

 repay any ornithologist to go out of his way to see. The Abbots- 

 bury swannery is said to have existed for many centuries, and is 

 situated on the Fleet, a long strip of sheltered water, lying behind 

 the far-famed Chesil Beach, in Dorsetshire. The Standard of Dec. 

 24th, 1879, gave the following account :— " Mr. Mark Hopson, 

 steward to the Earl of Ilchester, the owner of the Abbotsbury 

 swannery, comprising about sixteen hundred birds, has just supplied 

 some interesting facts. It is stated that fourteen hundred birds are 

 on the Meet, and both the swanneries are steadily increasing in 

 numbers. The Weymouth swannery was started in 1873, when 

 Lord Ilchester presented to the town seventy-two, and it is now 

 kept up from the funds of the corporation. The Abbotsbury 

 swannery, which has been' in existence hundreds of years, was 

 rapidly diminishing a few years ago, as in August, 1866, there 

 were only six hundred and forty-six birds, one hundred and fifty- 

 seven being missed. Since that time, with more careful looking out 

 on the Fleet waters, the numbers have progressed satisfactorily, 

 until the Abbotsbury swannery numbered fifteen hundred and eleven. 

 The Abbotsbury birds are counted twice a year, and at the last 

 counting the two swanneries numbered sixteen hundred and four. 

 The average number of missing birds from Abbotsbury during the 

 last fourteen years (not including the present) has been a little over 

 fifty. This year only twenty-one birds have been missed. The last 

 winter, though very severe, has had no ill effect on the Swans." I 

 wish this last paragraph could be still counted on as correct ; but 

 the two or three severe winters we had running about that period 

 had a most injurious effect upon them, and has once more reduced 

 their number to some seven hundred. Mr. W. Sparks, of Crewkerne, 

 obligingly wrote me the following solution of the reason of their 

 number so quickly diminishing, which I think a very probable one. 

 He writes : — " The weed which grew in the Fleet was the principal 

 food of the Swans, and I used to see the Cygnets gobble it up 

 almost as fast as the Italian women eat maccaroni at Baise for the 

 entertainment of travellers. Before the severe winter of 1880 and 

 1881 there was abundance of weed in the Fleet, a considerable 



