THE WHOOPING SWAN. 273 



THE WHOOPING SWAN. 



ENGLISH SYNONYMS. Whistling Swan : Montagu, Selby, Jenyns. Whoop- 

 ing Swan : McGillivray. Wild Swan : Hooper, Elk. 



LATIN SYNONYMS. Anas cygnus ferus : Linn. Anas vygnus : Latham, 

 Temminck. Cygnus ferus : Selby, Jenyns. Cygnus musicus : Bonaparte, 

 McGillivray. 



FRENCH SYNONYMS. Cygne d lee jaune : Temminck. Cygne sauvage 

 of authors. 



This is, in all probability, the Swan so celebrated among the 

 ancients. It is found in the northern regions of Europe and Asia ; 

 residing in summer within the Arctic circle, and migrating south- 

 wards and visiting Holland, France, and the British Islands in 

 winter, although occasionally breeding in the north of Scotland. 

 Southward, it extends to Barbary and Egypt ; eastward, it wan- 

 ders as far as Japan. The note of the Wild Swan is a sort 

 of whoop, uttered several times in succession a hoarse, hard, and 

 rather discordant cry and this has given it the name we have 

 adopted ; for it is difficult to imagine the grounds on which the 

 Prince of Canino gave it the name of Cygnus musicus. 



The peculiar organic distinction of the Swan is the great length 

 of the neck, consisting of twenty- three vertebrae, and the cavity in 

 the sternum for the reception of the trachea, which is admirably 

 described by Mr. Yarrell as descending the passage between the two 

 branches of the forked bone called the merrythought to a level 

 with the keel of the breast-bone, which is double, and receives the 

 tube of the trachea between its two sides, which here turns upon 

 itself after traversing the whole length of the keel, and passes 

 upwards and forwards, and again backwards, till it ends in the 

 vertical bone where the two bronchial tubes go off, one to each 

 lobe of the lungs. This is the apparatus through which the cry 

 is produced, which is variously described as a whistle, a whoop, 

 or a song, according to the fancy of the writer. They fly at a 

 great height when on a migratory journey, and in a wedge-like 

 figure, uttering this note as they proceed, and when heard at a 

 distance it is not unmusical. Mr. McGillivray listened to a flock 

 of Wild Swans coming in from the Atlantic after a gale : their 



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