236 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 



cients attributed the enchanting notes which have be- 

 come proverbial, but which are now known to be apocry- 

 phal. Neither Aristotle nor Pliny believed the bird 

 possessed the power of song, but Virgil, using it figura- 

 tively, causes it to indulge in rapturous strains, for he 

 says, in his ^neid: 



" Gum sese e pastu referunt, et longa canoros 

 DawL per colla modos. ' ' 



Further on, however, he gives a very just description 

 of its note : 



" Fiscosove amne Podusce, 

 Dant sauitum rauci per stagna loquacia Cygni.'^ 



Sonini thought that the whistling noise produced by 

 the wings, and which can be heard quite a distance, was 

 the orignial cause for supposing that the swan had the 

 power of song, and the reason why it was made sacred to 

 Apollo and the Muses. 



It was from this belief in the musical qualities of the 

 bird that poets were supposed to assume its form after 

 death. The beautiful myth, that swans foresaw their 

 own death and sang their own elegy, is referred to by 

 Ovid, where he sayst 



" Carmina jam mariens, canit exequialia Cygnus." 



Plato also touches upon this charming fiction, for he, 

 in Phoedo, attributes their melodious dirge to the same 

 sort of prescience which enables good men to look for- 

 ward with delight to the time when their mortal forms 

 will assume immortality. 



There are two species of swans on the American Con- 

 tinent, but, thus far, no persons have heard their enchant- 

 ing strains, unless their imagination has transformed the 

 frightful noise of the trumpeting swan {Cygnus bucci- 

 nator), or the resonant flight of the whistling, or Ameri- 

 can, swan {Cygnns Americanus), into the exquisite 

 molody so graphically described by the ancient poets. 



