AMERICAN SWAN. 681 



followed. While feeding and dressing, they make much 

 noise, and through the night their vociferations can be heard 

 for several miles. " Their notes are extremely varied, some 

 closely resembling the deepest base of the common tin horn, 

 whilst others run through every modulation of false note of 

 the French horn or clarionet. They are often killed by rifle- 

 balls from the shore, as well as by sailing down upon them 

 whilst feeding, or as they pass a point of land between two 

 feeding coves, and sometimes by means of a boat covered with 

 ice, and paddled or allowed to drift among them at night." 

 When wounded in the wing only, a large Swan will readily 

 beat off a dog, and is more than a match for a man in four 

 feet water ; a stroke of the wing having broken an arm, and 

 the powerful feet almost obliterated the face of a good-sized 

 duck-shooter. 



"This species requires five or six years to reach its 

 perfect maturity of size and plumage, the yearling Cygnet 

 being about one-third the magnitude of the adult, and 

 having feathers of a deep leaden colour. The smallest Swan 

 I have ever examined weighed but eight pounds. Its plu- 

 mage was very deeply tinted, and it had a bill of a very 

 beautiful flesh-colour, and very soft. By the third year the 

 colour of the bill becomes black, and the colour of the 

 plumage less intense, except on the top of the head and back 

 of the neck, which are the last parts forsaken by the colour. 

 Swans of the sixth year have assumed all the characters of 

 the adult. When less than six years of age, these birds are 

 very tender and delicious eating, having the colour and 

 flavour of the Goose; the latter quality, however, being 

 more concentrated and luscious." 



In the paper published in the American Journal of 

 Science and Arts, he states that the youngest and smallest 

 specimen he had met with " had a very soft reddish-white 

 bill, with a brown point, and measured three inches from the 

 point of the beak to the forehead, six inches and one-eighth 

 to the occiput, and the usual position of the coloured spot 

 was covered to one inch and three-eighths in front of the 

 eye, with small orange feathers, which extend down to the 

 gape. The plumage, to the end of the tail and primaries, 



