and sing their grief in sorrowful tones.' After digressing to assert tlial no 

 bird sings when either hungry or sorrowful, he resumes, 'Far less do the swans 

 sing out of grief, which, by reason of their belonging to Apollo, are diviners, 

 and sing more joyfully on the day of their death than ever before, as foreseeing 

 the good that aw^aits them in the other world.' '' 



Charles de Kay wrote: "Not the magnificence merely, but the element of 

 superstitious reverence, accounts for the frequency of the swan as a crest and 

 charge of coat of arms," stating that in heraldr\ the swan runs back through 

 heraldic devices to totemism, and that among the "oath-birds" which wizards 

 of Lapland called upon in their incantations, the swan often figured. 



It is also asserted that German local legends retain the idea of the swan as 

 an uncanny bird, proplietic of death or the under world, and that the Klagesee, 

 or Lake of Complaining, near Liban, was so named from the numbers of musi- 

 cal swans that congregated there. 



Pliny says, "Some affirm that swans sing lamentably a little before death, 

 but untruly, I suppose, for experience of many has shown the contrary." But 

 Aristotle says, "Swans are wont to sing, particularly when about to die, and 

 mariners in African seas have observed many of them singing with a mourn- 

 ful voice, and expiring with, the notes of their dying hymn." 



Cicero affirmed that Lucius Crassus spoke with the divine voice of a swan 

 about to die ; while Homer makes no allusion to their singing, but mentions 

 their "flying round the springs of Cayster, clanging on sounding pinions." Oppian 

 asserts, "They sing at dawn before the rising of the day as if to be heard more 

 clearly through the still air. They also sing on the sea-beach, unless prevented 

 by the sounds of storms and boisterous w'eather, which would not permit them 

 to enjoy the music of their ow^n songs. Even in old age, when about to die, they 

 do not forget their songs, though they are more feeble than in youth, l)ecause 

 they cannot so well erect their necks and expand their w-ings. * 



"They are invited to sing by Favonius, and as their limbs become sluggish 

 and their members deficient in strength w'hen death approaches, they withdraw- 

 to some place where no bird can hear them sing, and no other swans, impelled 

 b}' the same cause, may interrupt their requiem." 



While on the one hand Julius Scaliger vituperates Cardan for "lauding the 

 nonsense of the poets, and the mendacity of the Greeks about the singing of the 

 swan," Aldrovand cites on their behalf the testimony of one Frederico Pendasio, 

 a celebrated professor of philosophy and a person worthy of credit, who told him 

 that he had frequently heard swans singing melodiously while he was sailing 

 on the Mantuan Lake; also that one George Braun had heard the swans near 

 London "sing festal songs." 



Besides this, Mr. Rennie says, Olius \\'ormius professed that many of his 

 friends and scholars had heard them singing, and proceeded to give the experi- 

 ence of one John Rostorph, a student in divinity, and a Norwegian by nation. 

 "This man did, upon his credit, and with the interposition of an oath, solemnly 



732 



