THE WILD SWAN. 281 



the swan possesses at least two notes of the musical 

 gamut, even in a domesticated state. Who can there- 

 fore assert that the species may not have degenerated? 

 that Plato and Aristotle, and Diodorus Siculus were 

 not correct in their belief of the swan's vocality? 

 Hear what Pendasius says on the subject, that he 

 had often heard swans sweetly singing in the Man- 

 tuan lake, as he rowed up and down in his boat. 

 Olaus Warmius, too, the learned, declared there was in 

 his family a very honest young man, John Rostorph, a 

 student in divinity, who upon oath solemnly affirmed, 

 that once, in the territory of Drontheim, in Norway, he 

 was standing upon the sea-shore early in the morning, 

 when he heard a most musical murmur, composed of 

 sweet whistlings and pleasant sounds ; and looking 

 about him, and climbing to the top of a certain pro- 

 montory, he there espied an infinite flock of wild 

 swans in a bay, producing this most delightful har- 

 mony, the sweetest in his life-time he had ever heard. 

 This is, at least, as pleasant a fiction to read as one 

 of La Fontaine's fables ; and well doth the poetical 

 moralist make use of it, who contrasts the last song 

 of the swan with the hymn of jubilee on the lips of 

 the good dying man. Reverting to prosaic fact, we 

 find the hooper's cry to be particularly wild and dis- 

 agreeable, and harsh enough in its clangor to banish 

 the least notion of the melody of its species. The 

 wild swan is found in the Hebrides all the year 

 round, as it breeds there. This very elegant bird 

 is a constant visiter, and that in large companies, to 



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