742 



SWAN. 



are said to take place chiefly upon the water ; and 

 they do not strike with the wing 1 as they do when 

 defending themselves, or driving away an enemy from 

 their nest and brood when on the land, they try to 

 drown each other by seizing the neck, and keeping 

 the head under water. They are very hardy and 

 long-lived animals ; and their down, or under plu- 

 mage, is so close and fine, that they are well adapted 

 for remaining on the water for the greater part of their 

 time. When it was the fashion to have things large 

 and rare at the tables of the opulent in preference to 

 things really good, swans made a figure in the bill of 

 fare. They have now, however, been wholly dis- 

 carded ; and besides the regret that we feel that the 

 water should be deprived of birds so very ornamental, 

 there is really very little temptation to kill swans for 

 the sake of their flesh. It is black, hard, and rank, 

 even in the young ones, and the old are too tough for 

 being masticated. The eggs are also not very pala- 

 table ; and so there is every inducement to leave them 

 in the undisturbed possession of their proper element. 

 Their skins, their feathers, and their down are used 

 for many purposes ; but still though these are of con- 

 siderable value, they are not of so much as to com- 

 pensate for the loss of the birds. It is of the waters 

 only that they can properly be regarded as ornaments ; 

 for when kept in the farmyard they are quite out of 

 their element ; and cannot be kept without absolute 

 confinement, unless their wings are so mutilated as to 

 deprive them of the power of flight. But though they 

 pine in confinement, and cannot be made to remain 

 willingly in a state of regular domestication, they can 

 become very tame upon the water, and will readily 

 come sailing in their best style to those who are in 

 the habit of giving them food. There are several 

 species ; and one, the black swan of Australia which 

 bears the climate of Britain very well, waslonglooked 

 upon as a bird impossible to be found. Many of the 

 animals of Australia would have astonished the anci- 

 ents ; and thus it was perhaps only natural that the 

 bird whose existence they held to be impossible 

 should be found in that part of the world. 



THE WILD SWAN, whistling swan, whooper, or 

 hooper (Cygnus ferus). The bill of this species is 

 seimcylindrical, and of a black colour, but with the 

 cere on the base of the upper mandible yellow ; the 

 body is white, but with a yellowish tinge on the head 

 and upper part of the hind neck ; the irides are 

 brown, and the naked parts of the feet black ; the 

 bronchial part of the trachea is very much enlarged 

 and convoluted ; the length of the full-grown male 

 bird is rather more than four feet and a half; and the 

 extent of the wings two or three inches more than 

 five feet. The female is less than the male, but of 

 the same colours. 



It is highly probable that the notion of the swan 

 being tnute while in health, and becoming musical at 

 the approach of death, arose from confounding this 

 wild species with it. The voice of the wild swan cannot 

 certainly be looked upon as very musical ; but there 

 is a mournful sonorousness about it, which gives it not 

 a little of the expression of a song of death. It is a 

 dull and solemn hwoo hwoo, having what is called an 

 inward sound, though audible at a considerable dis- 

 tance. The voices of birds are all inward, that is, the 

 proper organ of sound is at the branchial end of the 

 windpipe ; but those that trill in clear and sharp 

 keys, evidently modify the sound very much by the 

 action of. the throat, the mouth, and the tongue, 'Such 



a bird as the wild swan has very little of this kind of 

 modification ; and thus the sound is delivered with 

 all the harshness and depth which it receives from the 

 convolutions of the trachea. 



This is not the only confounding that there has 

 been of these two species of swan ; for Buffon and 

 others have regarded them as being the same species, 

 notwithstanding the marked difference that there is 

 aetween them, which is not of the same kind as any 

 change that we know to have been produced by arti- 

 ficial treatment. The windpipe of the white ortami 

 swan has not the same structure as that of the whist- 

 ting one ; and the bill and its cere are not of the 

 same colour. We know of no instance in which the 

 form of the windpipe of an animal, or indeed even 

 the mandibles and the cere of a bird, are changed by 

 the most artificial treatment. The difference in colour, 

 too, that of a slight yellowish tinge upon the head and 

 nape of what is called the wild one, is the very oppo- 

 site of what we should expect to be produced by arti- 

 ficial treatment, that is, of what is so produced in the 

 case of other animals. A breaking of the colour is 

 that which artificial treatment usually produces ; but 

 here the colour of what is considered as the tamed 

 or artificially treated one is the more entire of the 

 two ; and, therefore, even setting aside the mere spe- 

 cific differences of the windpipe and the bill, this 

 change of colour, the very opposite to what we 

 invariably meet with when a tame animal is bred out 

 of a wild, is quite against the possibility of an iden- 

 tity in species between these two swans ; but, farther 

 than this, the mute white swan has not been subjected 

 to any kind of artificial treatment by which its natural 

 characters or habits could have been much changed. 

 It is not a domesticated bird in anv one part of its 

 habits or economy. It does not breed in confine- 

 ment, it is not fed* artificially, and it is put under no 

 particular shelter by which the effect of the atmo- 

 sphere upon it could be altered. It is among the 

 domesticated animals, that is, it is upon the same 

 grounds with them in some part of the breadth of 

 these grounds no doubt ; but it is itself subjected to 

 no artificial treatment ; and the best proof of this is, 

 that, in no part of the world where the white swan is 

 to be found, have its colours been in the least broken 

 or changed. Now, in every domesticated animal, the 

 colour that it has in a state of wild nature is the very 

 first thing to give way ; and then the perfect colour 

 of the white swan is an unanswerable proof that it is 

 really a bird in a state of nature ; and, consequently, 

 those who assert that it has been bred out of the 

 whooping swan, maintain, in fact, that one species of 

 animal may, in a state of nature, and without any 

 interference of art, originate another and different 

 species. Once admit this, and there is an end of all 

 rational disquisition upon the productions of Nature. 

 If one species can, in the ordinary course, and with- 

 out any interference, originate another species, there 

 could, by possibility, be no rational or intelligible 

 distinction of species at all ; for all the distinctions of 

 animals would be broken down, not by external cir- 

 cumstances, but by the very nature of the animals 

 themselves ; and were this to be the case, the whole 

 of Nature would be one mass of confusion, to which 

 not one iota of philosophy could be applied. 



The localities and the habits of these two species 

 of swans are also quite distinct. The wild swan is a 

 much more migratory bird than the other, and its 

 habitat is found farther to the north, to which it 



