126 
THE SWAN. 
any provocation. In these respects it is very different from 
the wild or Whistling Swan. 
This beautiful bird is as delicate in its appetites as it is 
elegant in its form. Its chief food is corn, bread, herbs 
growing in the water, and roots and seeds, which are found 
near the margin. At the time of incubation it prepares a 
nest in some retired part of the bank, and chiefly where 
there is an inlet in the stream. This is composed of water 
plants, long grass, and sticks : and the male and female 
assist in forming it with great assiduity. The Swan lays 
seven or eight eggs, white, one every other day, much 
larger than those of a goose, with a hard, and sometimes a 
tuberous shell. It sits six weeks before its young are 
excluded ) which are ash-coloured when they first leave the 
shell, and for some months after. It is not a little dangerous 
to approach the old ones, when their little family are feed- 
ing round them. Their fears, as well as their pride, seem 
to take the alarm, and when in danger, the old birds carry 
off the young ones on their back. A female has been 
known to attack and drown a fox, which was swimming 
towards her nest ; they are able to throw down and trample 
on youths of fifteen or sixteen ; and an old Swan can break 
the leg of a man with a single stroke of its wing. 
