81 6 A HISTORY OF 



by the same aperture ; and being contracted into a narrow compass 

 by a broad and bony cartilage, it is divided into two branches, which, 

 before they enter the lungs, are dilated, and, as it were, swollen out 

 into two cavities. 



Such is the extraordinary difference between these two animals, 

 which, externally, seem to be of one species. Whether it is in the 

 power of long-continued captivity and domestication to produce this 

 strange variety, between birds otherwise the same, I will not take upon 

 me to determine. But certain it is, that our tame swan is nowhere 

 to be found, at least in Europe, in a state of nature. 



As it is not easy to account for this difference of conformation, so 

 it is still more difficult to reconcile the accounts of the ancients with 

 the experience of the moderns, concerning the vocal powers of this 

 bird. The tame swan is one of the most silent of all birds ; and the 

 wild one has a note extremely loud and disagreeable. It is probable, 

 the convolutions of the windpipe may contribute to increase the clan- 

 gour of it ; for such is the harshness of its voice, that the bird from 

 thence has been called the hooper. In neither is there the smallest 

 degree of melody ; nor have they, for above this century, been said 

 to give specimens of the smallest musical abilities; yet, notwithstand- 

 ing this, it was the general opinion of antiquity, that the swan was a 

 most melodious bird ; and that even to its death, its voice went on 

 improving. It would show no learning to produce what they have 

 said upon the music of the swan : it has already been collected by 

 Aldrovandus; and still more professedly by the Abbo Gedoyn, in the 

 Transactions of the Academy of Belles Lettres. From these accounts 

 it appears that, while Plato, Aristotle, and Diodorus Siculus, believed 

 the vocality of the swan, Pliny and Virgil seem to doubt that received 

 opinion. In this equipoise of authority, Aldrovandus seems to have 

 determined in favour of the Greek philosophers; and the form of the 

 windpipe in the wild swan, so much resembling a musical instrument 

 inclined his belief still more strongly. In aid of this also, came the 

 testimony of Pendasius, who affirmed, that he had often heard swans 

 sweetly singing in the lake of Mantua, as he rowed up and down in 9 

 boat ; as also of Olaus Wormius, who professed that many of his 

 friends and scholars had heard them singing. "There was," says 

 he, "in my family, a very honest young man, John Rostorph, a stu- 

 dent in divinity, and a Norwegian by nation. This man did, upon 

 his credit, and with the interposition of an oath, solemnly affirm, that 

 once, in the territory of Dronten, as he was standing on the sea-shore 

 early in the morning, he heard an unusual and sweet murmur, com- 

 posed of the most pleasant whistlings and sounds ; he knew not H 

 first whence they came, or how they were made, for he saw no man 

 near to produce them ; but, looking round about him, and climbing 

 to the top of a certain promontory, he there espied an infinite num- 

 ber of swans gathered together in a bay, and making the most de- 

 lightful harmony: a sweeter in all his lifetime he had never heard." 

 These were accounts sufficient at least to keep opinion in suspense, 

 though in contradiction to our own experience ; but Aldrovandus, to 

 put, as he supposed, the question past all doubt, gives us the testimony 

 of a countryman of our own, from whom he had the relation This 

 honest man's name was Mr. George Braun, who assured him, 1 hat no- 



