SWANS 223 



is not dumb. It sometimes makes a low, whistling sound. 

 People are not agreed as to whether there is any real founda- 

 tion for the familiar tradition that the Mute Swan remains silent 

 until about to die, and then sings a " song." Some people ac- 

 quainted with the habits of swans declare that the swan is more 

 vocal when dying than at any other time in its life. Others 

 say that the idea probably arose as a result of some one's hear- 

 ing a dying swan moaning in pain, as sick animals and birds 

 often do, and concluding that it was uttering a series of sounds 

 characteristic of swans in a dying condition. However that 

 may be, the Mute Swan is distinctly less noisy than the wild 

 Whistling Swan. 



Until 1697 all swans known to civilized people were white, 

 and the swan was an emblem of purity of color. In that year 

 a Dutch navigator visiting Australia found there a black swan. 

 Afterwards a white swan with a black neck was discovered in 

 South America. Had the subject of heredity been well under- 

 stood before the discovery of these two swans that were not 

 white, people familiar with the white swans would have known 

 that there were colored swans in some unexplored country (or 

 that they had existed in the known world in a former age), 

 for white swans are not perfectly white at maturity, and when 

 young they are gray. Neither is the black swan all black. It 

 has white flight feathers, and its black color is a rusty black, 

 that is, a black mixed with red. 



Swans are very long-lived birds, but stories of swans living 

 to seventy or eighty years of age are not to be credited. It 

 cannot be affirmed that the birds may not live as long as 

 that, but the evidence in the cases reported is defective. The 

 reports of swans living for fifty years are quite credible. The 

 male and female swan are not readily distinguished, for there 

 are no external indications of sex, and. the birds use their 

 voices so rarely that, even if there is a difference in the notes 

 of the male and female, it is not practical to use it to distinguish 



