Swans have for ages been protected on the river Thames as royal property; and it continues at this day to be accounted felony to steal their eggs: by this means their increase is secured, and they prove a delightful ornament to that noble river. Latham says the estimation in which they were held, in the reign of Edward IV., was such, that only those who possessed a freehold of the clear yearly value of five marks were permitted even to keep any. In those times, hardly a piece of water was left unoccupied by these birds, as they gratified the palate as well as the eye of their lordly owners of that period: but the fashion of those days has passed away, and Swans are by no means as common now as they were formerly, being by most people accounted a coarse kind of food, and consequently held in little estimation: but the Cygnets (so the young Swans are called) are still fattened for the table, and are sold very high, commonly for a guinea each, and sometimes more; hence it may be presumed they are better food than is generally imagined.
At Abbotsbury there was generally a noble Swannery, the property of the Earl of Ilchester, where six or seven hundred birds were kept, but the collection has of late been much diminished. The Swannery belonged anciently to the abbot, and, previously to the dissolution of monasteries, the Swans frequently amounted to double the above number.
From the whiteness of this bird, the expression of a “Black Swan” was used in ancient times as equivalent to a nonentity; but a species nearly entirely black has been lately discovered in Australia. This bird is as large as the white Swan, and its bill is of a rich scarlet. The whole plumage (except the primaries and secondaries, which are white) is of the most intense black.
Swans are very long lived, sometimes attaining the great age of a century and a half.
THE WILD GOOSE. (Anser ferus.)