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 consists in marking the beaks of adult birds and pinioning the cygnets, is still, though shorn of some of its former ceremonial, observed some time during the month of June. Swans, like both of the other groups, are distinguished by a separate name for either sex: pen and cob for the swan, gander and goose, drake and duck, and the figurative use of some of these terms in such popular sayings as "making ducks and drakes of money," "sauce for the goose," etc., is too familiar to call for more than passing mention.