162 MUTE SWAN. 
to live fifty years. ‘The male bird swims higher out of the 
water than the female. 
The noise made by the sounding pinions of these great birds, 
may be heard at a long distance. ‘They fly in a straight line, 
and at the height of three or four hundred feet, that is the 
wild birds; the tame ones only attain to a much lower elevation. 
They walk in an ungainly manner, and evidently are not at 
home on the dry land. Every one must have observed the 
elegant manner in which the Common Swan arches up its wings 
when sailing about on the water; and it seems, so I am told, 
that the attitude is peculiar to it, and is not exhibited by the 
wild species. 
They feed on water-plants, their roots and leaves, insects 
and their larve, and occasionally swallow fish. They take some 
water each time that they browse. 
The Swan has obtained the character, contradicted by its 
name, as well as, except in some very small degree, by fact, 
of being a bird of song. It has especially had assigned to it 
the office of singing before it dies, a dirge at its own departure, 
the echoes of which die away over the form that has then 
ceased to utter it. Some saturnine epigrammatist thus turned 
the idea into a medium of satire— 
‘Swans sing before they die— 
Methinks, ’*t were no bad thing, 
Would certain persons die before they sing.’ 
The usual note is rendered, by Meyer, by the words ‘maul, 
maul.’ The Swan has, however, a low, soft, and not unmusical 
voice, formed of two notes, uttered in the spring and summer, 
when engaged with its young. Colonel Hawker has printed 
a few bars of it in stave: the bird kept nodding with its 
head, as if pleased with its own music, or beating time to it. 
The Swan disposes its nest on the ground near the water 
side, or on some mound on an island in the river or lake. It 
is made of rushes and flags, and if the water threatens to rise, 
more materials, which the male bird brings and the female 
works in, are added to the deposit under the eggs, which are 
thus gradually raised further out of danger. 
The following appeared in the ‘Nottingham Journal,’ in 
1844:—‘We are informed, upon undoubted authority, that the 
Swans (which usually build upon the ground,) have this year 
invariably raised their nests to the height of two yards and 
upwards; a similar fact is observable with respect to Water 
