THE WILD SWAN, OR HOOPER. 
835 
appearance after it is well under way. The Wild Swan 
rises with difficulty from the water, making a noise 
which may be heard a long way off. The slim neck is 
outstretched when the bird commences to move, half 
flying half running, and thrashing the water with its 
feet and wings, so as to raise a cloud of spray visible at 
some considerable distance: this style of locomotion 
is pursued for from forty to eighty yards along 
the surface, until the bird at last rises with slow, 
measured strokes of its pinions, which may be heard 
from afar, and sails smoothly away at a pretty good 
pace. The whistling of a flock of Wild Swans when 
flying high overhead is pleasant to the ear: their flight 
then sounds somewhat like distant bells. In descending, 
the bird takes an oblique direction towards the water, 
thus gliding on some distance over the waves, or bearing 
itself up from them with its feet, so as to lessen the 
otherwise inevitable shock. It is only when the Swan 
has alighted, and swims on, that it is seen in all its 
beauty: then the long neck is laid in those soft curves, 
the wings are raised, and the bird assumes that graceful 
form which has caused the poet to elect it as the type of 
the highest beauty, which the most cold-blooded individual 
cannot but look upon with wondering eyes; the slim 
body sinks but little beneath the wave, the broad paddles 
propel it easily and lightly forward,—-passion seems to 
live in every motion, and renders each one more beautiful 
than the last. 
The Hooper is less graceful in the act of swimming, 
but a better walker than the Mute Swan, and surpasses it 
in voice, though the appellation of Mute Swan is entirely 
a misnomer, for that bird possesses a powerful note, 
which is, however, certainly not so musical as that of the 
