NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
431 
February ; and in January they refuse their food and will not fat 
any more. They weigh, with their feathers, from twenty to 
thirty pounds. They are exceedingly good eating; the taste 
being between hare and wild duck, with a dash of venison. 
The soup made of the giblets is exceedingly good. 
How TO Cook a Swan. 
Take three pounds of beef, beat fine in a mortar, 
Put it into the swan — that is, when you've cauglit her. 
Some pepper, salt, mace, some nutmeg, an onion, 
Will heighten the flavour in gourmand's opinion. 
Then tie it up tight with a small piece of tape. 
That the gravy and other things may not escape. 
A meal paste (rather stiff) should be laid on the breast, 
And some whitey brown paper should cover the rest. 
Fifteen minutes at least, ere the swan you take down, 
Pull the paste off the bird that the breast may get brown. 
The Gravy. 
To a gravy of beef (good and strong) I opine, 
You'll be right if you add half a pint of port wine, 
Pour this through the swan— yes, quite through the belly, 
Then serve the whole up with some hot currant jelly. 
N.B. — The swan must not be skinned. 
Moles, p. 167. — The following is a quotation from my "Log- 
book of a Fisherman and Zoologist " — " After dinner we went 
round the sweetstuff and toy booths in the street, and the vicar, my 
brother-in-law, the Ptev. H. Gordon, of Harting,Petersfield, Hants, 
introduced me to a merchant of gingerbread-nuts, who was a great 
authority on moles. He tends cows for a contractor who keeps 
a great many of these animals to make concentrated milk for the 
navy. The moles are of great service ; they eat np the worms 
which eat the grass, and wherever the moles have been after- 
wards the grass grows there very luxnriantly. When the moles 
have eaten all the grubs and worms in a certain space, they 
migrate to another, and repeat their gratuitous work. The grass 
wdiere the moles have been is always the best for the cows. I 
think it would puzzle even Mr. Darwin, or even the Eight Hon. 
G. AVard Hunt, First Lord of the Admiralty, to connect the 
health of British seamen with the poor despised moles, if they 
did not know the facts." 
M. Carl Vogt relates an instance of a landed proprietor in 
France who destroyed every mole upon his property. The 
next season his fields were ravaged with wire-worms, and his 
crops totally destroyed. He then purchased moles of his 
neighbours and preserved them as his best friends." 
In August 1875, when at ]\Ir. Burr's, at Aldermaston Park, 
Peading, I endeavoured to smoke some moles out of their runs. 
