Swans 



estimated. Like many of their smaller relatives, they fly in 

 wedge shaped flocks, with an experienced, clarion voiced veteran 

 in the lead. Dr. Sharpless, who was the first to point out this 

 species as distinct from the whooping or whistling swan of 

 Europe, with which our early ornithologists confused it, says : 

 "Their notes are extremely varied, some closely resembling the 

 deepest bass of the common tin horn, while others run through 

 every modulation of false note of the French horn or clarionet." 

 The age of the bird is supposed to account for the difference in 

 the voice. No one can mistake the notes for the product of any 

 musical instrument, however. One unkind man in the south, 

 who was wakened in the depth of night by the noisy trumpet- 

 ings of a flock feeding in a lagoon near his home, was heard to 

 remark that if the swan did not really sing just before its death, 

 it really ought to die just after making that noise! The poets, 

 from Homer to Tennyson, and not the scientists, are responsible 

 for the story of the swan's chanting its own dirge. These 

 swans are particularly noisy when dressing their feathers, when 

 feeding, and when flying, especially just after mounting from the 

 water into the air, when they make loud demands each for its 

 proper place in the V-shaped column. The Indians say that ihe 

 swans follow in the wake of a flock of geese. Perhaps the 

 Hudson Bay Fur Company, which has bought thousands of pounds 

 of swan's down from the Indians, best knows why there are so 

 few flocks of swans left to follow the geese to-day. 



Around the shores of lakes and islands in the Hudson Bay 

 region, these swans return to nest in May ; and gathering a mass 

 of sticks and aquatic plants, pile them to a height of two feet 

 or more, this down-lined nest being sometimes six feet across. 

 In the labor of making it the male helps, for he is a far 

 better mate and father than either a drake or a gander. From 

 two to six rough, grayish eggs, over four inches long and nearly 

 three inches wide, are laid in June, and not until after five 

 weeks of close confinement on the nest can the proud mother 

 lead her brood to water. At first the fledgelings are covered with 

 a grayish brown down, which gradually changes into the white 

 plumage that it takes twelve months to perfect. Young cygnets 

 are counted a great delicacy by the epicures of Europe. 



Had the prehistoric swans been content to nibble herbage on 

 the banks of streams, instead of immersing their necks to probe 



144 



