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Updated: June 15, 2025
Twice a day the girls went down to feed them with grain and bits of boiled pumpkin for the pumpkins soon began to come into bearing and the ducklings and cygnets, which last were at present but little larger than the others, would swim rapidly toward them when they saw them, and would feed greedily out of their hands.
Nebbie caught and killed them whenever he could, but he had no particular taste for swimming, and he was on rather 'strained relations' with a pair of swans who, with a brood of cygnets kept fierce guard on the opposite bank against all unwelcome intrusion. His careful examination of the lily beds done, John Walden sprang back again from the pier to the land, and there hesitated a moment.
The same may be urged, with equal truth, of the Gothic hall, which, with its darkened and tinted windows, its elevated and gloomy roof, and massive oaken table garnished with boar's-head and rosemary, pheasants and peacocks, cranes and cygnets, has an excellent effect in fictitious description.
The same may be urged, with equal truth, of the Gothic hall, which, with its darkened and tinted windows, its elevated and gloomy roof, and massive oaken table garnished with boar's-head and rosemary, pheasants and peacocks, cranes and cygnets, has an excellent effect in fictitious description.
Whatever nature has provided for the delight of sense, is here spread forth to be enjoyed. What can mortals hope or imagine, which the master of this palace has not obtained? The dishes of luxury cover his table, the voice of harmony lulls him in his bowers; he breathes the fragrance of the groves of Java, and sleeps upon the down of the cygnets of Ganges.
In the same manner they take the young cygnets; and these I believe to be as good eating and as delicate an article of food as any country can produce. It is also an interesting sight to see the natives creep after wild-fowl, and under cover of the reeds and bushes get so near that they can either spear them or catch them with a noose.
They are very prolific birds, laying from five to eight light-green eggs with brownish buff markings. Some years ago a splendid brood of six jolly little nigger cygnets were hatched out by the black swans at Kew. But the most successful breeder of black swans in this country was Mr. Samuel Gurney, who began his stock with a pair on the river Wandle, at Carshalton.
They moved down slowly to stately music till they came past the trees on which the birds were settling. A word from Prince Florentine, the goshawk, and they all rose into the air, herons beneath, cygnets above, and goshawk circling above all. The weddineers wondered at the sight when, swoop! the herons were down among them scattering the men-at-arms.
Austin's mildness the 'durus pater infantum'! And the 'super'-Horatian effulgence of Master Foolgentius! O Swan! thy critical cygnets are but goslings. N.B. I have, however, since I wrote the above, heard Mr. J. Hookham Frere speak highly of Fulgentius. Ib. p. 352.
She had to take to flight, and was met running along the path crying for aid, with the swan, its wings outstretched, in full chase after her. Only lately, a person paddling in a canoe near Chelmsford approached a nest of cygnets, when the parent swan swam out, and seizing the bow of the canoe, nearly upset it.
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