680 CYGNUS AMERICANUS. 



Habits. — This species, the common Swan of North 

 America, long confounded with the common Wild Swan of 

 Europe, and afterwards with Bewick's Swan, was first accu- 

 rately distinguished and described by Dr. Sharpless, in a 

 paper read before the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- 

 delphia, on the 7th of February 1832, and printed in the 

 twenty-second volume of the American Journal of Sciences 

 and Arts. In the first volume of the Cabinet of Natural 

 History, published, in 1831, in Philadelphia, he has also 

 given a detailed and most agreeable account of its habits, 

 respecting which, however, it is not expedient to present 

 more than the following epitome : — 



The Swans leave the shores of the Polar Sea about the 

 1st of September, and resort to the lakes and rivers in about 

 the latitude of Hudson's Bay, where they remain until Octo- 

 ber, when they collect into flocks of twenty or thirty, and in 

 favourable weather commence their southward flight, mount- 

 ing high in the air, in the form of a prolonged wedge. 

 " When mounted, as they sometimes are, several thousand 

 feet above the earth, with their diminished and delicate out- 

 line hardly perceptible against the clear blue of heaven, their 

 harsh sound softened and modulated by distance, and issuing 

 from the immense void above, assumes a supernatural charac- 

 ter of tone and impression that excites, the first time heard, a 

 strangely peculiar feeling." In flying, they extend their 

 necks to their full length, advance with an undulating motion 

 of their outspread wings, and, when favoured by a moderate 

 wind, proceed at the rate of an hundred miles an hour. In 

 October and November they reach their winter homes, gene- 

 rally arriving in the night, and making the shores ring with 

 their vociferous congratulations. The Chesapeake Bay is a 

 great resort during the winter, flocks of from one to five hun- 

 dred feeding on the flats near its western shores. They 

 always select places where they can reach their food by the 

 length of their necks, they being never seen to dive. The 

 food to which they are most partial is the Valisneria Ameri- 

 cana, worms, insects, and shell-fish. They are exceedingly 

 watchful, so as to be with difficulty approached ; but seldom 

 fly off, even from the pursuit of a boat, unless very closely 



