SONG OF THE SWAN. 
203 
uttered A while the female gave G sharp, there would 
result the harshest and most insupportable of discords. 
We may add that this dialogue is subjected to a constant 
and regular rhythm, with the measure of two times (?). 
The keeper assured me that during their amours, these 
birds have a cry still sharper, but much more agreeable.” 
The late Charles Waterton once had an opportunity, 
which rarely occurs, of seeing a swan die from natural 
causes. “ Although I gave no credence,” he says,* “ to the 
extravagant notion which antiquity had entertained of 
melody from the mouth of the dying swan, still I felt 
anxious to hear some plaintive sound or other, some soft 
inflection of the voice, which might tend to justify that 
notion in a small degree. But I was disappointed. He 
nodded, and then tried to recover himself, and then 
nodded again, and again held up his head ; till, at last, 
quite enfeebled and worn out, his head fell gently on the 
grass, his wings became expanded a trifle or so, and he 
died whilst I was looking on. He never even uttered his 
wonted cry, nor so much as a sound to indicate what he 
felt within. 
u The silence which this bird maintained to the last 
tends to show that the dying song of the swan is nothing 
but a fable, the origin of which is lost in the shades of 
antiquity. Its • repetition can be of no manner of use, 
save as a warning to ornithologists not to indulge in the 
* “ Essays on Natural History,” second series, p. 128. 
