SWAN.—The swan, as the most majestic and distinguished of all water fowl, is honoured with royal protection: those who disturb their nests, destroy their eggs, or injure, wound, or cripple the swans, are liable to imprisonment for twelve months, and a fine at the pleasure of the King. The corporate body of the City of London, as CONSERVATORS of the RIVER THAMES, have an annual aquatic excursion to Staines, (which is the western extremity of their boundaries,) in the most pleasant and most plentiful season of the year, with colours flying, music playing, and all the appropriate parapharnalia of the first and most opulent city in the universe. All the swans upon the Thames, within their district, are under the protection of the Conservators; and this display of civic grandeur is perpetuated from one generation to another, by the appellation of "Swan-hopping day."
TAIL.—Upon the uniform shape and setting on of a horse's tail, his _good_ or _ill_ appearance greatly depends. When the spine is continued in a curvilinear direction beyond the rump, and the basis of the tail is formed _too low_ in the quarters, the horse is termed "goose-rumped;" and no _nicking_, or _setting_, will ever give him the figure of a handsome horse _behind_. It has been a long-standing maxim, that "a good horse can't be of a bad colour;" and there may probably be some who think a good horse can't have a _bad tail_; but a little experience, in buying and selling, will convince them, that the difference between the two will be little less than _ten_ or _fifteen_ pounds in a horse of no more than fifty pounds value. Great losses are sometimes sustained for want of a little circumspection at the moment of making a purchase; and this may sometimes proceed from the horse's having some peculiar points of attraction, in the fascinating survey of which the defects are totally absorbed; hence arises the pecuniary deficiency when the subject becomes again to be sold, particularly if to a more prudent and less hasty purchaser. The old sportsman, when going to _buy_, looks at the horse as if it was really his _own_, and he was going to _sell_; in doing which, he estimates his _saleable_ value with an eye of greater accuracy, makes a tolerably fair calculation what he ought with consistency to _bid_, that he may sustain no great loss, should he have future occasion to sell.