MU. T. SOUTHWELL ON THE ST. HELEN’S SWAN-PIT. 
2 Go 
II. 
ST. HELEN’S SWAN-PIT. 
Ihr Thomas Southwell, E.Z.S., Vice-President. 
Read 29th September , 1891. 
Therm exists in our midst, quite unsuspected by the majority of 
the citizens, and but little known to the rest, an institution of 
great interest to the naturalist and hardly less worthy the attention 
of the antiquary ; I allude to the St. Helen’s Swan-pit, where year 
after year in the second week of August are gathered together 
from seventy to a hundred dusky cygnets, which may be seen, in 
happy unconsciousness of their fate, busily preparing themselves 
to lill the important and honourable place they are destined to 
occupy at the tables of the great and rich in the feasts 
of good things for which the closing months of the year are 
celebrated. 
At Abbotsbury, on the Thames, and in a few other localities in 
England, there are large numbers of Swans bred upon the waters ; 
but I doubt if in any of these of like extent, with the exception 
of the first-named, so many cygnets are reared as on the rivers and 
broads of North-east Norfolk, and I am not aware of any other 
establishment for the systematic fatting of these line birds, save 
that at St. Helen’s Hospital and one or two other private Swan-pits 
also in the neighbourhood of Norwich. 
I regret my inability to enter upon the interesting subject 
of “ Swan rights,” or of the “ Cygninota ” or Swan marks attached 
to such rights ; a branch of the subject which would amply repay 
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