THE SWAN 103 



throughout life, sings most sublimely at the approach 

 of death ; it then sings, not a funeral dirge, but a 

 jolly, rollicking song. This presented an excellent 

 opportunity for moralising. Mediaeval authors were 

 always on the look out for such opportunities. The 

 swan, wrote the author of the Speculum Mundi, '* is 

 a perfect emblem and pattern to us, that our death 

 ought to be cheerful, and life not so dear to us as it is." 

 This practice of singing before death has, like the crino- 

 line, quite gone out of fashion. The mute swan can 

 never have been so great a musician as some of his 

 brethren, since the French horn which he carries in his 

 breast-bone is not nearly so well developed as it is in 

 either the hooper or the black swan. Let me here 

 say, en passant, that both ancient and mediaeval writers 

 declined to believe in the existence of a black swan ; 

 they regarded it as " the very emblem and type of 

 extravagant impossibility." The phoenix, the dragon, 

 and the mermaid they could believe, but they felt that 

 they must really draw the line at a black swan. 



A swan's nest is a bulky structure composed of 

 rushes, reeds, and other aquatic plants ; it is placed 

 on the ground near the water's edge. Six or seven 

 large greenish-white eggs are laid. The breeding season 

 is from March to May. Swans do not, of course, breed 

 in India. Indeed, it is only on rare occasions that 

 they visit that country, and then they do not venture 

 farther south than Sind. 



