WHISTLING SWAN. 



very different from such amiable and affecting fables, 

 for the voice of this bird is very loud, shrill, and 

 harsh, resembling the sound whoogh, whoogh, or the 

 disagreeable tone of a clarionet when blown by a 

 novice. When high in the air, and modulated by 

 the winds, however, the notes of an assemblage of 

 them arc not unpleasant. The Icelanders compare it 

 to the notes of the violin : they hear it at the end of 

 their long and gloomy winter, when the return of 

 the Swan announces also the return of summer ; 

 every sound, therefore, must be to them melodious 

 which presages a speedy thaw, and a release from their 

 tedious confinement. 



Equally absurd stories have also been invented and 

 often repeated of the great strength of the wing of 

 these birds, and how dangerous it is to approach their 

 nests, as a blow from the wing, it is asserted, will 

 break a man's thigh. " It is high time," Montagu 

 says, " such absurdities should be erased in this phi- 

 losophic age, and that the mind of man should reason 

 before he continues to relate such accounts, only cal- 

 culated to frighten children. Let the bones of the 

 wing of the Swan be examined, and compared with 

 the thigh of a man, or even of his arm, and it will 

 be evident that it would be as impossible for a Swan 

 to break a man's arms as it would be to break his 

 head with a reed. The bone of a man's arm would 

 bear a pressure fifty times as great as the bone of a 

 Swan's wing ; how, then, is the inferior in size and 

 strength to break the superior without, at least, being 

 itself fractured ? It should also be recollected, that 

 a bird is incapable of striking with any degree of 



