[3] "One had better throw open his pond or river to all the poachers in the district than indulge in a taste for swans. If any one doubts this, let him row up the Thames from Weybridge to Chertsey, or on to Laleham, during the latter end of the month of April or early in May, and take particular and special notice of what the swans are doing. If he has still any doubt, and likes to kill one or two and cut them open, he will solve his doubts and do a service at the same time; he may be fined for it, but he will certainly suffer for a good action and in a good cause. A swan can and will devour a gallon of fish-spawn every day while the spawn remains unhatched, if he can get it; and it is easily found. I leave the reader to calculate what the few hundreds (I might almost say thousands) on the Thames devour in the course of two or three months. Their greediness and voracity for fish-spawn must be witnessed to be believed. If this were not so, the Thames ought to swarm to excess with fish, whereas it is but poorly supplied. Here is a little calculation. Suppose each swan only to take a quart of spawn per diem, which is a very low average indeed; suppose each quart to contain fifty-thousand eggs (not a tithe of what it does contain). I am not speaking of salmon and trout here, their ova being much larger; suppose only two hundred swans (about a fourth, perhaps, of the number really employed) are at work at the spawn, and give them only a fortnight for the period of their ravages. Now what is the result we get? Why, a little total of one hundred and forty million. One hundred and forty million of eggs! Suppose only half of those eggs to become fish, and we have a loss of seventy millions of fish every year to the River Thames--a heavy price to pay for the picturesque, particularly when the reality may perhaps be doubled, or trebled, or even quadrupled." Francis Francis.