308 HABITS OF BIRDS. 



We agree with M. Antoine in thinking it not impro- 

 bable that the popular and poetical notion of the 

 singing- of the swan was derived from the doctrine of 

 the transmigration of souls, according to which the 

 philosopher Pythagoras taught that the souls of poets 

 passed at death into swans, and retained the powers 

 of harmony they had possessed in their human form*. 



There are several passages, however, in the writ- 

 ings of the ancients which it may be interesting to 

 notice in relation to this subject. Plato, in his 

 Phaedo, makes Socrates express himself as follows: 

 " When swans perceive approaching death, they sing 

 more merrily than before, because of the joy they 

 have, in going to the God they serve. But men, 

 through the fear of death, reproach the swans, saying 

 that they lament their death, and sing their grief in 

 sorrowful notes." Then follows the remark we have 

 already quoted, to the effect that no bird sings when 

 it is either hungry or in sorrow: " Far less," con- 

 cludes the speaker, " do the swans sing out of 

 grief, which, by reason of their belonging to Apollo, 

 are diviners, and sing more joyfully on the day of 

 their death than before, as foreseeing the good that 

 awaits them in the other world." 



Aristotle again expressly says that " swans are 

 wont to sing, particularly when about to die, and 

 mariners in the African seas have observed many of 

 them singing with a mournful voice and some 

 dyingV " expiring with the notes of their dying 

 hymnj," as M. Montbeillard has rendered it. Cicero 

 says of Lucius Crassus that " he spoke with the 

 divine voice of a swan about to die ;" and Pau- 

 sanias affirms " the bird to be the glory of music," 

 (jiovaucrj? $oj~av). 



* Animaux Celebres, i. App. 66. 



f Hist. Anim. ix. 12. J Oiseaux, Art. Le Cygne. 



De Oratore, iii. Praef. 



