fattening themselves incessantly
for Leadenhall and easily captured when required.

Between swans, geese and ducks there is little anatomical difference,
save in the matter of size. The swans are the giants of the race, and
the swans of three continents are white. It was left for Australia, land
of topsy-turveydom, to produce a black swan (I spare the reader the
obvious classical tag), and this remarkable bird, first observed by
Europeans in the early days of 1697, was quickly brought to Europe and
figures in the earliest list of animals shown in the London Zoological
Gardens. All these birds have a curious trick of hissing when angry, and
this habit, perhaps because it is usually accompanied by a deliberate
stretching of the neck to its full length, is seriously regarded by some
as conscious mimicry of snakes, a proposition that must be left to
individual taste, but that strikes me as somewhat far-fetched. At any
rate, it gives to these birds a formidable air, and, though the current
belief in its power of breaking a man's arm with a blow from its wing is
probably unwarranted, an angry swan, disturbed on its nest, is an
awesome apparition of which I have twice taken hurried leave. On the
first occasion, I had nothing but a valuable camera with me, and it was,
in fact, after a futile attempt to photograph the bird on the nest that
I was moved to seek the boat and push off from the little island in the
Upper Thames on which it had its home. The other encounter was on a
Devonshire trout stream, and my only weapon was a fragile trout rod. The
certainty that discretion is, under these circumstances, the better part
of valour is emphasised by the knowledge that any violence to the bird
would probably lead to a prosecution. Even the smaller geese can inspire
fear when they dash hissing at intruders; hence, no doubt, the
nursemaid's favourite reproach of children too frightened to "say bo to
a goose," an expression made classical by Swift.

The majority of these waterfowl are insectivorous in the nursery stage
and vegetarian when full grown. Fish forms an inappreciable portion of
their food, with the two notorious exceptions of the goosander and
merganser, though anglers are much exercised over the damage, real or
alleged, done by these birds to their favourite roach and dace in the
Thames. These swans belong for the most part to either the Crown or the
Dyers' and Vintners' Companies, and the practice of "uppings," which
con