HAD these notes been written from the standpoint of sport, the three familiar groups of birds, which together make up this world-wide aquatic family, might better have borne their alternative title "wildfowl" with its covert sneer at the hand-reared pheasant and artificially encouraged partridge that, between them, furnish so much comfortable sport to those with no fancy for the arduous business of the mudflats. It is true that, of late years, the mallard has, in experienced hands, made a welcome addition to the bag in covert shooting, as those will remember who have shot the Lockwood Beat on the last day of the shoot at Nuneham; and there is historic evidence of "wild" duck having been reared for purposes of sport with hawks in the reign of Charles I. Yet such armchair shooting of wildfowl was ignored by Colonel Hawker and the second Earl of Malmesbury, both of whom, gunning in the creeks and estuaries of the south coast, made immense bags of ducks and geese,[126] working hard for every bird and displaying Spartan indifference to the rigours of wintry weather. To hardy sportsmen of their type, wildfowl offer red-letter days with punt or shoulder guns, not to be dreamt of under the ?gis of the gamekeeper.  
In this country, at any rate, we associate the V-shaped companies of wigeon and gaggles of geese with an ice-bound landscape, though in exceptional years, even where they no longer stay to breed, these night-flying northerners linger to the coming of spring, and Hawker noticed the curious apparition of grey geese and swallows in company on the first day of April, 1839. This wedge formation of flight over land and sea is not only peculiar to these waterfowl, but is not apparently adopted by any other long distance migrants. No satisfactory explanation of their preference for flying in this order has been found, but it is thought to lessen the air resistance, which must be a consideration for these short-pinioned fowl that weigh heavy in proportion to their displacement and at the same time lack the tremendous spread of wing that enables the[127] wandering albatross to soar for days together over the illimitable ocean. With one noticeable exception, these waterfowl exhibit a more extraordinary range of size and weight than any other family of birds, from the whooper swan, five feet long and twenty-five pounds on the scales, down to the little teal, with an overall measurement of only fourteen inches and a weight that does not exceed as many ounces. The only other family of birds running to such extremes is that of the birds of prey, which include at once the stately condor of the Andes with its wing-spread of fifteen feet, and the miniature red-legged falconet of India and adjoining countries, in which the same measurement would scarcely reach as many inches.
 
Since even game birds are derisively referred to as "tame" only by those ignorant of the facts, the birds now under notice differ in this respect from all those previously dealt with; and they are geographically apart, again, from our other domesticated animals, since they are not, like the barndoor fowl and most of the rest, of Asiatic origin, but must often, in the grey of a winter morning,[128] be conscious of their near relations flying at liberty across the sky. The geese and ducks have been remarkably transformed by the process of domestication, and a comparison between those of the farmyard and their kindred in the marshes should illustrate not only the relative value of most virtues, but also the all-importance of Aristotle's how, when and where. Strictly speaking, no doubt, the tame birds have degenerated, both mentally and physically, as surely as the tame ass. They have lost the acute perceptions and swift flight of their wild relations. Economically, on the other hand, they are immeasurably improved, since the farmer, indifferent to the more inspiring personality of the grey goose and the mallard, merely wants his poultry to be greedy and stupid, fattening themselves incessantly for Leadenhall and easily captured when required.
 
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[129] (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[130] encounter was on a Devonshire trout stream, and my o............