

KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 145 

NATURE’S PROVIDENCE FOR MAN. 

USES OF THE SWAN. 
ComF, let us mount on Contemplation’s wings, 
And mark the ‘* causes’”’ and the ‘* ends” of things. 


ALF THE WORLD AT LEAST, 
be what you describe them,— 
indifferent to the why and 
because of what is daily pas- 
sing under their observation. 
They seldom let their inqui- 
ries go beneath the surface; 

nor do they care to trouble themselves about | 
causes and effects. This is a great neglect 
of the talent which has been given them to 
trade withal. 
These remarks, corroborative of your own 
recently-expressed opinions, are suggested 
by a perusal of “ Le Monde des Oiseaux,”’ 
by A. Toussenel. I have been much inter- 
ested by what I there find recorded of the 
Swan. With your permission, I will transfer 
his comments, in an English dress—noé the 
unbecoming dress, I hope, of which you so 
loudly and justly complain !—to the columns 
of OUR OWN JOURNAL; and we shall find 
that this majestic animal, instead of being 
made simply to be looked at, was created for 
a much nobler end. 
The history of animals will one day men- 
tion, to the disgrace of the era, that amongst 
all birds, the swan only (in France) was of 
use to man; and further, that this solitary 
auxiliary was of use to him without his even 
suspecting it. The “ Dictionary of Natural 
History,’’ a work very recently published, 
has dared to attack Buffon, and many other 
poets of antiquity and of modern times, for 
their admiration of the swan,—a creature, it 
is said, suitable for the decoration of orna- 
mental water, but from which nothing more 
is to be expected. I acknowledge the 
ancients have gone to too great a length in 
their infatuation, when they endowed him 
with a melodious voice to sing his death-song, 
—a belief which Martial has so beautifully 
expressed in the distich, 
“ Nulla defecta modulatur carmina lingua 
Cantator Cycnus ipse sui.” 
But, for the tranquillity of my conscience, 
IT had rather have sinned through adulation 
and lavish praise, jike the Greeks, than 
through injustice and illiberality, like the 
authors of the above-mentioned work. It is 
there said, the swan is only fit to decorate 
ornamental water ; which is not the fact. The 
swan is an intelligent bird, and perfectly 
understands how to be at once beautiful and 
useful. Were his merits limited to the deco- 
ration of public gardens, I should still highly 
esteem him; but he does more than this, and 
he has a sacred right to the gratitude of man. 
Vou. IV.—10. 
MY DEAB Sir, do appear to | 
The mission of the swanis, to destroy every 
focus of contagious infection produced by 
stagnant waters. ‘The swan is the most for- 
midable enemy of the vellow fever; it is his 
ambition to annihilate it. He knows that 
this fearful pestilence, which is exactly the 
same as that in our marshes—whether in 
France or Algiers, is caused by the decom- 
position of the weeds which impede the flow 
of the water, whether decorative, for the 
purposes of irrigation, or in the fossees of our 
citadels. He has no other occupation or 
anxiety than to ent down these poisonous 
| weeds. Put a sufficient number of swans in 
_ stagnant waters where aquatic plants abound ; 
| and in a few months, they will have cleared 
| ali away, and transformed the most fetid, the 
muddiest waters, and those most obstructed 
| by deleterious vegetation, into limpid mirrors. 
| The large bason of the Tuileries, and that 
| of the Luxembourg, are both inhabited by a 
| pair of swans; and the water-weed (lentille 
| d’eau) has no time to spread its green man- 
tie over the motionless surface of their 
waters. But in the garden of the Palais 
National, where the piece of water is much 
smalier, and is constantly agitated by the 
action of the waterfall (an agitation which 
| 

must be greatly against the formation of any 
herbaceous growth), aquatic vegetation has 
nevertheless succeeded in establishing itself 
in disfiguring the fountain. 
A creature that would destroy the yellow 
fever, and prevent the pestilential exhalations 
of all the marshes in the world; a creature 
that visibly metamorphoses fetid slime into 
drinkable water—is a creature which these 
unfortunate savans call a useless animal, fit 
only to please the eye on a public promenade. 
There is a very easy method of avoiding 
any error in natural history ; but it is quite 
in vain for me to tell the secret (even 
although gratuitously) to all the world. No 
one will employ it. This method consists in 
never saying aught about any animal, with- 
out having previously ascertained for what 
use it was created, and for what reason it 
has such and such peculiarities assigned to 
it; for every creature is a Sphynx which 
presents its enigma to be guessed, and the 
true savant is the Cidipus who best deci- 
phers it. But superticial minds find it more 
ecnvenient to laugh at the “ dabblers’’ in 
enigmas, than to heat their own brain by 
endeavoring, like the ‘‘ dabblers,”’ to discover 
their hidden meaning; and such are discou- 
raged at the first failure. The “ naturalist- 
proper’ (1 owe my thanks to your corres- 
pondent, Bombyx Atlas, for the term,which I 
think exactly gives my anthor’s meaning in 
the words “ Zoologiste ofiiciel’’) fails into the 
error of imitating the practical economist ; 
who will very readily explain ‘‘ how wealth 
is produced,’ but who dares not say “ why 

L 
