12 
ANATIM. 
of which number he killed five in November 1848. He has seen 
them but of one size, similar to a living hooper, which he pointed 
out to me on a pond at Islay House. On Loch-in-daal, a flock 
of fifteen wild swans appeared early in the winter of 1848-49. 
Very interesting descriptions of the habits of wild swans, as 
observed in Scotland, are given in St. John’s f Wild Sports of 
the Highlands’ (chap, xxiv.), and his f Tour in Sutherlandshire.’ 
A most eloquent passage on these birds will be found in the 
‘ Recreations of Christopher North’ (vol. i. p. 73). 
The distinctive characters of the wild (C. ferns) and tame 
swan [C. olor) are correctly pointed out by Harris, in connection 
with the extracts given from his work at p. 7. Among the 
fifty-four islands of Strangford Lough named by him, there 
are Big Swan Island of twenty, and Little Swan Island of five, 
acres ; a second one bearing the latter name ; and a fourth called 
simply Swan Island, each of which is one acre in extent. 
The map attached to the work is on so small a scale that these 
islands are not laid down in it ; and within the present century 
they seem to have been almost forgotten, or to have been called 
by other names. In Williamson’s large map of Down, published 
in 1810, there are no Swan islands, nor do any appear in the 
Ordnance index map of the county; but a Swan island is inserted 
in one of the Ordnance baronial maps, on a very large scale, as 
situated near the town of Strangford. There can be little doubt that 
the islands originally received their names from being frequented by 
these birds, which, in all probability, also bred there at one period. 
Long subsequent to the date of Harris’s volume — towards the end of 
the last century — Low, in his f Fauna Orcadensis,’ informs us that 
“ a few pairs build in the holms of the loch of Stennes,” in Orkney.* 
The data, which will be found in the present volume under C. ferus 
and C. Bewickii , will probably tend to the conclusion that in the 
middle of the 19th century, as well as in 1589 (according to the 
extract given at p. 7), wild swans are “much more plentiful than 
Noticed in preface to vol. i. p. xvii. 
