NOT A MUTE SWAN. 
.207 
now to be seen), thinks lie might have lived much longer but for a 
lump or excrescence at the top of the windpipe, which, on dissecting 
him, he found to be composed of grass and tow. 
The term Mute Swan, applied to the tame species, does 
not seem to be quite applicable, if we are to believe Yarrell, 
who says, in his account of this species : ' The Swan being 
identified with Orpheus, and called also the bird of Apollo, 
the god of music, powers of song have been often attributed 
to it, and as often denied. It is, however, perfectly true 
that this bird lias a soft low voice, rather plaintive, and 
with little variety, but not disagreeable. I have heard it 
often in the spring, and sometimes later in the summer, when 
moving slowly about with its young. Colonel Hawker, in 
his sporting work, at page 261, has printed a few bars of 
the Syv^an's melody, formed out of two notes, C and the minor 
third (E flat), and the musician, it is said, kept working his 
head as if delighted with his own performance. With regard 
to the poetic fancy, that the Sv^an, however mute at other 
times, sings its own death-song, in allusion to which many 
beautiful passages might be cited from the ancient classics 
and our own older poets especially, an author in ' The 
Gentleman's Magazine,' after quoting Warburton's opinion 
that ^ the dying song of the Swan is nothing but a fiction, 
the * origin of which is lost in the shades of antiquity,' 
observes: — * We believe that the ancient poets and mytholo- 
gists never intended to represent their picture of the cantus 
cygni morientis as true to nature ; it was one of their 
inventions of beauty : they added melody of voice to grace- 
fulness of form, and then dedicated this most beautiful 
bird to Apollo, at once the god of beauty and melody.' 
The mention of the ancient poets reminds us of the oft- 
quoted line by one of them — Bara avis in terns, nigroque 
simillima cygno, * a rare bird upon earth, and very like a 
black Swan.' But Swans with sable plumage are not such 
rare birds as they supposed ; they have been imported into 
this country from Australia, and are now frequently seen 
in our ornamental grounds. Instances have occurred in 
which Black Swans, although little inferior in size and 
strength to the white ones, have been killed by the latter 
for intruding on their breeding-places. 
