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Allen’s naturalist’s library. 
our first authority on the Anatidte, who says that none of the 
characters attributed to C. immutahilis are constant. 
Range in Great Britain. — The Swan is now universally distri- 
buted as a tame or semi-domesticated bird all over the three 
kingdoms, but it has been introduced into many of its present 
habitats. The species is said to have been first brought to 
England by King Richard I. from Cyprus. At Lord Ilchester’s 
seat at Abbotsbury, near Weymouth in Dorsetshire, there is 
the largest Swannery in this country. Specimens are often 
shot in the winter, and these are generally supposed to be 
escaped birds, but as Mr. Howard Saunders points out, they 
may be thoroughly wild birds which have migrated to our 
shores from the Continent, in many parts of which the Mute 
Swan breeds in a thoroughly wild condition. 
Range outside the British Islands. — -The present species breeds 
in Southern Sweden, in Denmark and Germany, in Central 
and Southern Russia, on the Lower Danube, the Black and 
Caspian Seas, and as far east as Turkestan, Mongolia, and 
Amurland. In winter it visits the Mediterranean, and has 
been found at that season in North-western India. 
Habits. — These are so well-known to every one of my readers 
that but few words are necessary. Mr. Mansel-Pleydell gives 
a very interesting account of the Abbotsbury Swannery in 
his “ Birds of Dorset,” and he states that in 1865 there 
were about 500 Swans on the estuary of the Fleet, and that 
the number had increased to 1,400 birds in 1880, but in the 
last-named year “ the number became reduced by one-half, 
owing to the Fleet becoming frozen over during an extremely 
low spring-tide, when the water-plants growing at the bottom 
became entangled in the ice, and were torn up by the roots at 
the returning tide. Many of the Swans, thus suddenly de- 
prived of their supply of food, either died of famine or 
migrated, and reduced the number to about 800, which 
average it now maintains.” 
The food of the Mute Swan consists of aquatic plants, as 
well as molluscs and insects, and it is said to devour frogs on 
occasion, while there are not wanting many river-side fi.sher- 
men, who declare that the Swans eat small fish and ova. 
The tame Swans nest earlier than wild ones, which do not 
