Nest, &c. 
280 NATATORES. CYGNUS. Swan: 
every reason to suppose has visited this country for many 
years, although constantly confounded with the present spe- 
cies, to which, in outward appearance, it bears a very close 
resemblance, being only rather inferior in size. The geo- 
graphical distribution of these birds embraces the northern 
regions of Europe, Asia, and America, in all of which they 
are abundantly found. In summer they retreat to very high 
latitudes to breed and rear their young, and those inhabiting 
our parallel of latitude are then to be met with scattered over 
Norway, Iceland, Lapland, Spitzbergen, &e. In Asia they 
are numerous in Kamschatka, Northern Siberia, and other 
polar districts of that continent, and they are described as 
abounding on the unfrequented borders of the upper lakes of 
North America; and are mentioned in Captain Franxuin’s 
Journal as amongst the first birds of passage that come from 
the south upon the breaking up of the long polar winter. In 
these dreary regions, where man finds but a precarious sub- 
sistence by fishing and the chase, the return of the Swan is 
anxiously looked for, on account of the various benefits it 
confers ; its flesh and eggs affording wholesome and invigo- 
rating food, and its skin, when dressed with the down, sup- 
plying a variety of clothing, of remarkable softness and 
warmth. <A few pairs, it is said, occasionally remain upon 
some of the outer Orkney Islands, and there breed upon the 
margins of the fresh water lochs; but these can only be con- 
sidered as stragglers, the great body retiring (as I have 
above remarked) to higher latitudes for that purpose.—The 
nest of the Wild Swan is formed of the withered parts of 
reeds, rushes, and other aquatic herbage, to a considerable 
thickness * ; and the eggs, from five to seven in number, are 
of a pale oil-green or greenish-white colour. In six weeks 
the young are excluded, but it is upwards of three months 
before they become fully fledged. In Iceland, to the inha- 
* Captain Lyon, in his Private Journal, during the voyage of discovery 
under Captain Parry, mentions the nest of a Swan found upon Winter 
Island. He describes it as formed of small pleces of peat, in size five feet 
ten inches by four feet ten inches, and two feet in height. 
