WILD SWANS. 225 
courage that the small predaceous animals, from fox to 
fisher, carefully avoid her nursery. He will not even 
hesitate to attack man sometimes, and as he can deliver 
very powerful blows with his heavy pinions, most persons 
do not care to encounter him, unless they are armed with 
a club ora gun. The cygnets, which are of a grayish 
color when they are three months old, are able to take 
care of themselves as soon as they leave the shell, and 
being expert swimmers, they can travel several miles, 
if necessary, in search of food. They remain with their 
parents until the approach of cold weather, and perhaps 
longer, as they may form a portion of the same herd 
when several families unite, preparatory to starting for 
their winter homes, late in the autumn. Cygnets, on 
account of their grayish hue, are often mistaken for the 
young of the snow-goose, yet it is an easy matter to dis- 
tinguish them apart, as all geese have a strip of feathered 
skin between the eye and the bill, and swans have not. 
Swans breed throughout British America and the north- 
ern regions of the United States, being most abundant 
in the Hudson Bay Territory, Alaska, and portions of 
Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. The Indians have cap- 
tured cygnets too young to be able to fly, as far south as 
Snake River, so it is safe to infer that the birds breed as 
low down as the forty-ninth parallel. The red men en- 
tertain the greatest respect for swans, principally, I should 
judge, on account of their great longevity, for they say 
that a “ good bird lives longer than a well-fed squaw,” 
and is far more valuable when the latter becomes de- 
crepit. 
They have no more faith in the melodious qualities of 
these birds than scientists have in the music of the 
spheres, though they say it is pleasant to hear the sonor- 
ous resonance produced by flocks of whistling swans 
when they fly high over the land at night. It was to 
this European species of the whistling swan that the an- 
