310 HABITS OF BIRDS. 



invited to sing by Favonius, and as their limbs be 

 come sluggish, and their members deficient in 

 strength when death approaches, they withdraw to 

 some place where no bird may hear them sing, and 

 no other swans impelled by the same cause may in- 

 terrupt their requiem*." 



Julius Scaliger, agreeing with Pliny, vituperates 

 Cardan for lauding the nonsense of the poets, and 

 the mendacity, as he terms it, of the Greeks about the 

 singing of the swan f ; while Aldrovand, more philo- 

 sophically, refers us to the structure of the organs 

 of voice (before described}), as countenancing the 

 poetical creed ; for when we observe, he says, the 

 great variety of modulation which can be produced 

 from a military trumpet, and, going upon the axiom 

 that nature does nothing in vain, compare the form 

 of such a trumpet with the more ingenious mechan- 

 ism of the swan's windpipe, we cannot but conclude 

 that this instrument is at least capable of producing 

 the sounds which have been described by the ancient 

 authors. He accordingly proceeds to corroborate 

 this theory by the testimony of those who have 

 actually heard swans singing. Amongst others, one 

 Frederico Pendasio, a celebrated professor of philoso- 

 phy and a person worthy of credit, told him he had 

 frequently heard swans singing melodiously while he 

 was sailing on the Mantuan lake. He also says 

 that, according to one George Braun (Brown), the 

 swans near London sung festal songs . Antonius 

 Musa Brasavolus further affirms, that he had him- 

 self observed them singing when near death || . The 

 author of the ' Physics Curiosa?,' however, says, " I 

 have been in many places where swans abound, but 



* In Halieut. t Exercit. 232. J Page 248. 



Ornithologia, iii. 9. 

 || Comment, ad Porphyr. Isagog. 



