"WILD SWANS. 225 



courage that the small predaceons animals, from fox to 

 fisher, carefully avoid her nursery. He will not even 

 hesitate to attack man sometimes, and as he can deliver 

 very powerful blows with his heavy pinions, most persons 

 do not care to encounter him, unless they are armed with 

 a club or a gun. The cygnets, which are of a grayish 

 color when they are three months old, are able to take 

 care of themselves as soon as they leave the shell, and 

 being expert swimmers, they can travel several miles, 

 if necessary, in search of food. They remain with their 

 parents until the approach of cold weather, and perhaps 

 longer, as they may form a portion of the same herd 

 when several families unite, preparatory to starting for 

 their winter homes, late in the autumn. Cygnets, on 

 account of their grayish hue, are often mistaken for the 

 young of the snow-goose, yet it is an easy matter to dis- 

 tinguish them apart, as all geese have a strip of feathered 

 skin between the eye and the bill, and swans have not. - 

 Swans breed throughout British America and the north- 

 ern regions of the United States, being most abundant 

 in the Hudson Bay Territory, Alaska, and portions of 

 Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. The Indians have cap- 

 tured cygnets too young to be able to fly, as far south as 

 Snake River, so it is safe to infer that the birds breed as 

 low down as the forty-ninth parallel. The red men en- 

 tertain the greatest respect for swans, principally, I should 

 judge, on account of their great longevity, for they say 

 that a " good bird lives longer than a well-fed squaw," 

 and is far more valuable when the latter becomes de- 

 crepit. 



They have no more faith in the melodious qualities of 

 these birds than scientists have in the music of the 

 spheres, though they say it is pleasant to hear the sonor- 

 ous resonance produced by flocks of whistling swans 

 when they fly high over the land at night. It was to 

 this European species of the whistling swan that the an- 



