226 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
cients attributed the enchanting notes which have be- 
come proverbial, but which are now known to be apocry- 
phal. Neither Aristotle nor Pliny believed the bird 
possessed the power of song, but Virgil, using it figura- 
tively, causes it to indulge in rapturous strains, for he 
says, in his AMneid: 
* Cum sese @ pastu referunt, et longa canoros 
Dant per colla modos.”” 
Further on, however, he gives a very just description 
of its note: 
‘* Piscosove amne Poduse, 
Dant sanitum rauci per stagna loquacia Cygni.” 
Sonini thought that the whistling noise produced by 
the wings, and which can be heard quite a distance, was 
the original cause for supposing that the swan had the 
power of song, and the reason why it was made sacred to 
Apollo and the Muses. 
It was from this belief in the musical qualities of the 
bird that poets were supposed to assume its form after 
death. The beautiful myth, that swans foresaw their 
own death and sang their own elegy, is referred to by 
Ovid, where he says: 
“ Carmina jam moriens, cunit exequialia Cygnus.” 
Plato also touches upon this charming fiction, for he, 
in Pheedo, attributes their melodious dirge to the same 
sort of prescience which enables good men to look for- 
ward with delight to the time when their mortal forms 
will assume immortality. 
There are two species of swans on the American Con- 
tinent, but, thus far, no persons have heard their enchant- 
ing strains, unless their imagination has transformed the 
frightful noise of the trumpeting swan (Cygnus bucci- 
nator), or the resonant flight of the whistling, or Ameri- 
can, swan (Cygnus Americanus), into the exquisite 
melody so graphically described by the ancient poets, 
