What the flavour of a cygnet may be I cannot say, having never tried it; but if it has the slightest resemblance to that of the adult Hooper,—which I was once rash enough to taste, after I had divested it of its skin, on the coast of Norfolk,—I should say it was anything but the King's-mat, or "King's food," as the Swedish peasants are wont to describe it. It is, however, to be remembered that as the Swan subsists almost entirely on aquatic plants,—and never, as some people imagine, on fish,—the flesh has not the slightest oily taste, so that it may be palatable to some, for "de gustibus non est disputandum" Coarse, however, in flavour, and black in colour, as my experience leads me to describe it, I cannot conceive that any amount of fattening, or any culinary skill, could make it worth the four guineas generally supposed to be its cost, according to the following scale: —
| For the lean Swan | One Guinea. |
| Fatting the Swan | One Guinea. |
| Dressing the Swan | One Guinea. |
| Cook's customary fee | One Guinea.[1] |
It must at the same time be confessed that it was of old considered a "lordly dish," and figures as -a very highly esteemed item in bills of fare of the sixteenth century; indeed no great feast was considered complete without it.
Before we left the Swannery, our guide showed us, within the same precincts, a decoy for Ducks hard by. There were the tame Ducks, which would come to his whistle, swimming about in the Fleet outside; there were the wattled fences which screened him from view of the incoming wild Ducks; there were the openings at which he showed himself when he would drive the birds up, now well within the channel; there was the point where the dog was sent in to decoy them on; and there was the gradually decreasing channel up which they were driven till they reached the fatal bag-net at the end; all in exact conformity with Yarrell's well-known illustration. But few Ducks are caught here now; they are mostly reserved for shooting. Asked as to the average number of Ducks thus caught in the winter, he said ten or twelve at a time was a very good catch, and two hundred in the course of the winter a very fair tale of Ducks. From which I concluded that although the Swannery is undoubtedly the largest in the
- ↑ 'The Zoologist' for 1846, p. 1250.
