1328 Birds. 



and sea-cows were found there. In 1726, however, two of them were brought alive 

 to Batavia and confirmed by Valentyn." Whether the " singing " either of white or 

 black swans is true, I know not ; nor is that of any importance to the subject of this 

 communication, as what I am simply endeavouring to show, is, that the bird which 

 Mr. King refers to, and from which he draws his deduction " that the singing of 

 swans of the ancients is not fabulous," was a bird altogether unknown to them, and 

 that therefore his deduction is erroneous. And, in order to do this, it will not be suf- 

 ficient merely to bring forward the previous statement of its first discovery on record 

 (however good may be the authority which that statement rests upon), but also to adduce 

 independent proof, from altogether independent sources, that the bird in question was 

 decidedly unknown : for, without this, no ornithologist of the present day could be 

 prepared to affirm for certain, that the Cygnus atratus did not once exist in countries 

 from which it has long retired, and that, for some cause unknown to us, it may have 

 migrated from other lands to what has been long considered, and in fact really is, its sole 

 remaining locality, — Australia. I grant that such an assumption is an exceedingly 

 improbable one; but, so long as it is possible, proof of the non-existence is actually 

 necessary to establish the point. And as one of the foremost, I would mention, that 

 it is altogether unnoticed in Pliny's ' Historia Naturalis.' But, perhaps, Mr. King's 

 ideas were rambling off amongst the satires of Juvenal, and " floating free," involun- 

 tarily fixed themselves on that well-known simile, so familiar to us all, containing, as 

 I believe it does, the only mention of a black swan in the whole bulk of classic au- 

 thors combined. I, of course, refer to " Kara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno " 

 (Sat. vi. 165), in which "nigro cygno," considered by the poet as the greatest impos- 

 sibility in nature, is put in opposition, ironically, to " mulier casta ! " The fact is, the 

 whole satire being a bitter invective against the ladies of Rome, and most unsparing 

 in its exposure, Juvenal does not cloak his censure when he likens their virtues not to 

 a thing which may occasionally, though seldom exist ; but rather to a physical impos- 

 sibility ; to what in the estimation of the age in which he lived, could not possibly by 

 any means occur. Being anxious, moreover, not only to expose, but exaggerate their 

 faults, he does not scruple to express his sentiments, and declares that a " mulier 

 casta " is but another name for an impossibility ; and asserts, satirically, that, if such 

 a thing could exist (as he allows was once the case, when, by the intervention of the 

 Sabine women, the war between the Romans and Sabines was put an end to), the fact 

 would be so rare and extraordinary, and the person thus constituted such a " rara 

 avis in terris " (a rare bird upon the earth) that he could liken her only to a black 

 swan (" nigro cygno "), i. e. to the thing in nature most unlikely to occur, and there- 

 fore the greatest impossibility he could fix upon ! To show exactly the force of the 

 above quotation, I will just mention one more expression, which the poet, in the next 

 satire, uses precisely in the same manner (only directed against the opposite sex), 

 when he likens such fortunate men as Quintilian, Ventidius, or Tullius to " white 

 crows." He says 



" Felix ille tamen corvo quoque rarior albo." (Sat. vii. 202). 

 " Yet that fortunate person is also more rare than a white crow.'' In which, as before, 

 an impossibility, as they considered it, is chosen, to give greater force to the expres- 

 sion, and to show how extremely rare such lucky men must be ; or, rather, how impos- 

 sible it is they could ever exist at all, unless Fortune smiled upon them at their birth. 

 And, in like manner, many other examples of this common form of speech might be 

 brought forward ; but why need we fly to antiquity for them, when we have idioms in 



