It is the Oie de Guinée of Buffon. Individuals are sometimes to be met with almost purely white, with a brown mark down the back of the neck. As an ornament of ponds and lakes, in pleasure grounds, these birds are little inferior to the swan, and it is chiefly for this purpose that they are kept. We have, however, seen them, and particularly the mixed breed, in farm yards.

THE TAME SWAN, OR MUTE SWAN.-The tame swan (cygnus olor) may perhaps come within the list of domestic birds, for though it lives and breeds at large on our rivers and sheets of water, it is not an indigenous species, in our island, nor is it one of our migratory visitors. Moreover, it is in all cases under ownership, and guarded by express laws relative to its preservation. It is, in fact, a "bird royal," in which no subject can have property, so long as it is on a public river or creek, except by an express grant.

The present species, in a wild condition, is a native of Siberia, north-eastern Europe, and the adjacent parts of Asia, migrating southwards in winter, when it occasionally visits Italy. On the Caspian Sea, through Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and Syria, it is abundant

in winter; and swans unnumbered, as in the time of Homer, may still visit Cayster's* springs, and there "stretch their long necks and flap their rustling wings."

At what period the swan became reclaimed and naturalized in western Europe and the British Isles, we have no means of ascertaining, certainly it was at a remote date; and as the laws we have alluded to prove, this noble bird was held in peculiar esteem. From a digest of the British statutes relative to the swan in the Penny Cyclopædia, we take a few extracts, to show their general tendency. The crown alone has the right of granting a property in swans on a public river, and conceding this privilege a swan-mark is also granted, for distinguishing the particular "game" or flock of swans, from others on the same river. Sometimes the crown, instead of granting a swan-mark, confers the still further prerogative right of seizing within a certain district all white or adult swans not marked. “Thus the abbot of Abbotsbury, in Dorsetshire, had a game of wild swans in the estuary formed by the isle of Portland and the Chesil Bank. The swannery at Abbotsbury

* A river in Asia Minor near Ephesus.

is the largest in the kingdom, and though formerly much more extensive, it still numbers many hundreds of these birds, forming an object of considerable attraction and interest to those who visit this part of the coast. It is now vested in the earl of Ilchester, to whose ancestor it was granted on the dissolution of the monasteries."

The city of Oxford has a game of swans by prescription, but we do not know that any are now kept.

On the Thames, the Dyers' and Vintners' Company, with the crown, divide the games of swans between them. The royal mark on the beak is made on the skin of the upper mandible with a knife.

The Dyers' Company have the swan-mark consisting of a single notch or nick on one side of the beak; that of the Vintners' Company consists of a mark on each side of the beak. Hence the sign of the swan with two nicks, converted in the present day into two necks.

The adult male swan is called a cob, the adult female a pen, the young a cygnet. The cygnets when hatched are clothed with brownish gray down, and do not acquire

the white plumage in its perfect purity till the beginning of the third year. The female sits upon five, six, or eight eggs, and during the season of incubation, is sedulously attended by her mate, who, however, gentle and inoffensive at other times, becomes now furious if any one approach the breeding place, and advances with raised up plumes, and every demonstration of excitement, to the attack; nor is the assault of so large and powerful a bird, a trifling affair. A blow with its wing would be likely to inflict a severe injury.

In former times the swan was in high repute, and was to be found on the tables of the great, and no banquet of ceremony or state dinner was accounted complete, if swans were not included in the costly bill of fare.

The swan feeds on grain, various aquatic plants, and the herbage along the sides of lakes and rivers; it soon becomes very familiar.

The common tame swan is very long lived. Its windpipe is simple without any flexure.

Closely allied to the tame swan, or cygnus olor, and formerly confounded with it, is a species called by dealers the Polish swan. It is the Cygnus immutabilis of Mr. Yarrell, who

first pointed out its differential characters. In this species, the black tubercle at the base of the beak is small even in old males: the legs, the toes, and intervening webs are slate gray. The cygnets are of as pure a white as the adults, and consequently undergo no change of colouring. The windpipe is simple as in the tame swan; there are, however, many very marked differences in the osteological structure of the two birds, which have been pointed out by W. G. Pelerin, esq., in the Magazine of Nat. Hist. 1839, p. 179.

The Polish swan is a native of the north of Europe and the borders of the Baltic, and occasionally visits our island, sometimes even in considerable numbers. Young individuals when captured readily become tamed, and breed freely on sheets of water.

Of the other wild swans of Europe and Asia, we may enumerate the hooper, or whistling swan, (cygnus ferus-Ray; cygnus musicus-Bechstein.)

This species is spread throughout the whole northern range of Europe and Asia, breeding in the high northern latitudes, (occasionally in the Shetland and Orkney isles,) and migrating southwards in winter, even to the shores of