Mr. George Pashlew, for the Sewer-board end.

Richard Thornton.

Edmund North,

Robert Sike, the elder.

William Longley.

Robert Live.

William Cook.

Sir John Burton, steward.

My brother Stapleton's servant.

My son Rockley's servant to serve in the state."

The same worthy knight's charges when Sheriff of Yorkshire, in the 19th year of the same king at the Lent Assizes, and in the 20th year of his reign at Lammas Assizes, bear testimony to the hospitality exercised by that officer in those days. Among the other provisions, we find a charge at the former of these assizes, for five hogsheads of wine, three claret, one white, and one red; the cost of which was 101. 16s. 4d.; but, though there are quantities of fish, no flesh appears in the account.

At the Lammas Assizes, neither flesh nor fowl was spared; nine quarters of wheat, twelve quarters of malt, five oxen, twenty-four wethers, six calves, sixty capons of Grease charged at 25s., as many other capons as cost 31. 14s. Od., twenty-four pigs, three hogsheads of wine, and twenty-two swans, carry us a very little way down the ample bill of fare.

It will naturally be inquired how the swan was presented on these great occasions?

There is reason for concluding, that the Royal Bird was generally roasted, of which more anon; but there were other ways of serving it up. For instance, among the receipts of the master cooks of Richard II., is the following, which we shall attempt to reduce to the English of the present time.

"CHAUDRON FOR SWANS.

"Take the liver and the offal (that is, the giblets) of the swans, put it to seethe in good broth, take it up, take out the bones, and 'hewe' the flesh small. Make a mixture of crust of bread and of the blood of the swan sodden, and put thereto powder of cloves and pepper, wine and salt, and seethe it, cast the flesh thereto hewed,' and 'mess it forth' with the swan."

When served with this sauce, the dish was called chaudron."

swann with

The bird also not unfrequently came to table" baked in a pye;" but its most usual appearance was as a roast.

The Norwich method is to take three pounds of beef beaten fine in a mortar, adding salt, pepper, mace, and that grand cookery gift, an onion, and stuff the swan (which must not be skinned) with it. The bird must be tied up tight to keep in the juices, and a stiff meal paste should be laid on the breast, the other parts being covered with whitedbrown paper about a quarter of an hour before the swan" is enough,” as the cooks say, the paste must be taken off and the breast browned.

It has been said, somewhat oracularly, that port wine should never come into a kitchen. If the word had been seldom, it would have been more germane to the matter; for there are occasions, trust us, reader, when it cannot well be dispensed with, and the gravy for the swan is one of them half a pint of that wine added to good, strong, beef-gravy, should be poured through the swan, which should be presented with hot currant jelly.

A well-fatted cygnet thus cooked and taken at the proper momentthat is not kept beyond November, after which time the bird falls off both in flesh, fat, and flavour, however well provided with barley—is a very delicious dish, and we have heard it compared, not inaptly, to that of something between goose and hare.

The foregoing receipt, in printed verse, which will be found in Mr. Yarrell's "British Birds," is usually sent with each Norwich bird.

The swan seems never to have appeared except on the tables of the great. Thus the Gild of the Holy Trinity at Luton, in Bedfordshire, appear from old records ranging from 19 Henry VIII., to the beginning of Edward VI., to have lived well at their anniversary feasts; but we cannot find that they ascended beyond "Geys," eighty-two of which geese, at a charge of 17. Os. 7d., were among the multitudinous dishes placed before the Gild at the feast in the nineteenth year of Henry VIII.

The swanherds call a male swan a Cob, and the female a Pen. A fine old male will sometimes reach, when stretched out, five feet in length, and will weigh some thirty pounds. The nail at the termination of the bill, its edges on each side, its base, the naked skin or lore up to the eye, the opening of the nostrils, and the tubercle or berry, are black. The rest of the bill is of a ruddy orange colour. The iris of the eye is brown; the whole of the plumage is of the purest white; and the legs and toes, with their webs, are black.

The female is not so large as the male, and her tubercle is less, her neck is not so thick, and she swims lower in the water than her

mate.

In a wild state, this species is found in Russia and Siberia, and almost throughout Europe. In Germany, the cygnets that have not been pinioned, migrate in autumn. Lithuania, Poland, Eastern Prussia, Holland, France, Provence, and Italy, are all recorded as its habitat in an unreclaimed condition; and so are the countries between the Black and Caspian Seas. In winter they have been seen in the Bay of Smyrna.

The swan's nest is a great mass of rushes, reeds, flags, and other coarse water-side plants, pitched on the ground near the water's edge, in some ait, for choice; and on this stack of herbage the Pen deposits some

six or seven eggs of a greenish white, rather dull withal, and about four inches in length by two. Six weeks must pass before the young cygnet breaks through its prison-walls into light and life; and during the whole time of incubation, the male is most assiduous in his attendance, keeping guard, and ready to do battle against all comers; yet thinking no scorn to take the mother's place occasionally on the eggs.

About July, the colour of the cygnets is dark lead-gray, approaching to sooty gray above, the neck and under parts of the body not so dark, the bill lead-colour, and the line at the margin of the base black. At the end of October, when they almost equal their parents in size, the bill changes to light slate-gray, with a tinge of green. The sooty grayish-brown prevails uniformly over the head, neck, and all the upper surface; while the lower surface of the body is uniformly of a lighter hue. The gray colour vanishes almost entirely after the second autumn; and when the cygnet has seen two years, the white robe is donned; in the third year the swan celebrates his nuptials.

In their half-domesticated state, the young family keep with their parents during the first winter; but, on the return of spring, the latter show their cygnets the cold shoulder; and, if they will not take the hint, fairly drive them away, and compel them to seek their own food, which consists of the tender parts of aquatic plants and roots, water insects, and now and then-but only now and then-small fishes.

Aristotle noticed the pugnacity of the swan, saying, that it will even fight the eagle-not that the swan will begin the quarrel, but he will not brook the attack of the Prince of the Birds of Prey. In rivers they have their own districts; and, if one swan trespasses on the domains of another, woe to the weaker vessel. We have attempted to describe a bloodless encounter of this kind in the fiftieth volume of this work :* but swan-fights do not always terminate so harmlessly.

It is on record, that black swans have more than once fallen victims to the prowess of their white neighbours. On one occasion, in the Regent's Park, two white swans set upon a black one, and one of the whites seizing the black's neck in his bill, shook him so violently and fatally, that he died almost on the spot; whilst the conquerors rowed proudly up and down with arched wings and feathers erect in all the pride of victory.

A friend, who was an early riser, had long noticed four swans on the Serpentine river. When taking his morning walk in June, 1840, he missed one of them, and saw blood upon the wing of one of the survivors. Upon inquiry, he found that the other three had attacked the fourth, and killed him. The body of the murdered swan was whealed as if it had been beaten with sticks.

Long life, when it is not interrupted by violence, is the swan's portion. Willughby speaks of him as "a very long-lived fowl, so that it is thought to attain the age of three hundred years:" "which" (saith Aldrovandus)" to me seems not likely. For my part, I could easily be induced to believe it for that I have been assured by credible persons, that a goose will live a hundred years or more. But that a swan is much longer lived than a goose, if it were not manifest in experience,

* Page 464.

yet are there many convincing arguments to prove, viz. that in the same kind it is bigger: that it hath harder, firmer, and more solid flesh that it sits longer on its eggs before it hatches them. For, that I may invert Plinie's words, those creatures live longest that are longest born in the womb. Now incubation answers to gestation." Whatever weight there may be in Willughby's argument, there can be no doubt that a swan will live a very long time. Mr. Yarrell says, that marked swans have been known to live fifty years; but there was one not very long ago, in the neighbourhood of Shepperton, though not upon the Thames, over whose head more than double that length of years was supposed to have passed.

The Morning Post of the 9th of July, 1840, had the following notice:

"" DEATH OF A CELEBRATED CHARACTER.

"The beginning of last week an exceedingly well-known character departed this life, namely, OLD JACK, the gigantic and venerable swan, with which the public have been so long acquainted on the canal in the enclosure of St. James's Park, at the advanced age of seventy years. Old Jack was hatched some time about the year 1770, on the piece of water attached to old Buckingham House, and for many years basked in the sunshine of royal favour, Queen Charlotte being extremely partial to him, and frequently condescending to feed him herself. When the pleasure-gardens in St. James's Park were laid out, Jack was removed there, and his immense size, sociable disposition, and undaunted courage, have often excited the admiration of the public. Jack's strength and courage were, indeed, astonishing. Frequently has he seized an unlucky dog who chanced to approach to the edge of his watery domain by the neck and drowned him; and, on one occasion, when a boy, about twelve years of age, had been teasing him, Jack caught him by the leg of his trousers, and dragged him into the water up to his knees. Jack, however, never acted on the offensive, and, if not annoyed, was exceedingly tractable. But the march of modern improvement affected poor Jack as much as it has done thousands of more pretending bipeds. The Ornithological Society was formed, and a host of feathered foreigners found their way on to the canal, with whom Jack had many fierce and furious encounters, and invariably came off successful. But a legion of Polish geese at length arrived, who commenced hostilities with Jack. Despising every thing like even warfare, they attacked him in a body, and pecked him so severely, that he drooped for a few days and then died. The body of poor old Jack is to be stuffed for one of the scientific museums."

Those who live near the banks of the Thames well know the instinctive prescience with which swans will, before a flood, raise their nests so as to save their eggs from being chilled by the water; and we will conclude this chapter, already we fear too long, with an account of one of these wonderful preparations, clearly showing that to the incubating swan,

Coming events cast their shadows before,

for which Mr. Yarrell was indebted to the kindness of Lord Braybrooke.

The scene of this true tale was a small stream at Bishop's Stortford. A female swan had seen some eighteen summers, had reared many broods, and was become familiar to the neighbours, who valued her highly. Once, while she was sitting on four or five eggs, she was observed to be very busy, collecting weeds, grasses, and other materials to raise her nest. "A farming man was ordered to take down half a load of haulm, with which she most industriously raised her nest and her eggs two feet and a half; that very night there came down a tremendous fall of rain, which flooded all the malt-shops, and did great damage. Man made no preparation, the bird did. Instinct prevailed over reason her eggs were above, and only just above the water."*

British Birds. A very interesting account of similar foresight in the Beaver will be found in the New Sporting Magazine for July, 1840. The Elbe, upon a particular occasion, had been higher than it had risen within the memory of man; but the event had been expected because the beavers had been observed to build such unusually high dams, a sure sign of spring floods in that river.