appetites: yet these, like every other animal, will not reject flesh, if properly prepared for them; it is sufficient praise to them that they do not eagerly pursue it.

As their food is chiefly vegetables, so their fecundity is in proportion. We have had frequent opportunities to observe, that all the predatory tribes, whether of birds or quadrupeds are barren and unfruitful. We have seen the lion with its two cubs, the eagle with the same number, and the penguin with even but one. Nature, that has supplied them with powers of destruction, has denied them fertility. But it is otherwise with these harmless animals I am describing. They seem formed to fill up the chasms in animated nature caused by the voraciousness of others. They breed in great abundance, and lead their young to the pool the instant they are excluded.

As their food is simple, so their flesh is nourishing and wholesome. The swan was considered as a high delicacy among the ancients; the goose was abstained from as totally indigestible. Modern manners have inverted tastes; the goose is now become the favourite, and the swan is seldom brought to table, unless for the purposes of ostentation. But at all times the flesh of the duck was in high esteem; the ancients thought even more highly of it than we do. We are contented to eat it as a delicacy, they also considered it as a medicine; and Plutarch assures us, that Cato kept his whole family in health, by feeding them with duck whenever they threatened to be out of order.

These qualities of great fecundity, easy sustenance, and wholesome nourishment, have been found so considerable as to induce man to take these birds from a state of nature, and render them domestic. How long they have been thus dependants upon his pleasures, is not known; for, from the

earliest accounts, they were considered as familiars about him. The time must have been very remote; for there have been many changes wrought in their colours, their figures, and even their internal parts, by human cultivation. The different kinds of these birds, in a wild state, are simple in their colourings: when one has seen a wild goose or a wild duck, a description of its plumage will, to a feather, exactly correspond with that of any other. But in the tame kinds no two of any species are exactly alike. Different in their size, their colours and frequently in their general form, they seem the mere creatures of art; and, having been so long dependant upon man for support they seem to assume forms entirely suited to his pleasures or necessities.

CHAPTER X.

OF THE SWAN, TAME AND WILD.

No bird makes a more indifferent figure upon land, or a more beautiful one in the water, than the Swan. When it ascends from its favourite element, its motions are awkward, and its neck is stretched forward with an air of stupidity; but when it is seen smoothly sailing along the water, commanding a thousand graceful attitudes, moving at pleasure without the smallest effort, when it "proudly rows its state," as Milton has it, "with arched neck, between its white wings mantling," there is not a more beautiful figure in all nature. In the exhibition of its form, there are no broken or harsh lines, no constrained or catching notions, but the roundest contours, and the easiest transitions; the eye wanders over every part with insatiable pleasure, and every part takes a new grace with new motion.

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This fine bird has long been rendered domestic; and it is now a doubt whether there be any of the tame kind in a state of nature. The wild swan, though so strongly resembling this in colour and form, is yet a different bird; for it is very differently formed within. The wild swan is less than the tame by almost a fourth; for as the one weighs twenty pounds, the other only weighs sixteen pounds and three quarters. The colour of the tame swan is all over white; that of the wild bird is, along the back and the tips of the wings, of an ash colour. But these are slight differences compared to what are found upon dissection. In the tame swan, the windpipe sinks down into the lungs in the ordinary manner; but in the wild, after a strange and wonderful contortion, like what we have seen in the crane, it enters through a hole formed in the breast-bone; and being reflected therein, returns by the same aperture; and being contracted into a narrow compass by a broad and bony cartilage, it is divided into two branches, which, before they enter the lungs, are dilated, and as it were swoln out into two cavities.

Such is the extraordinary difference between these two animals, which externally seem to be of one species. Whether it is in the power of long continued captivity and domestication to produce this strange variety between birds otherwise the same, I will not take upon me to determine; but certain it is, that our tame swan is no where to be found, at least in Europe, in a state of nature.

As it is not easy to account for this difference of conformation, so it is still more difficult to reconcile the accounts of the ancients with the experience of the moderns, concerning the vocal powers of this bird. The tame swan is one of the most silent of all birds; and the wild one has a note extremely loud and disagreeable. It is probable, the convolutions

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of the windpipe may contribute to increase the clangour of it; for such is the harshness of its voice, that the bird from thence has been called the Hooper. In neither is there the smallest degree of melody; nor have they, for above this century, been said to give specimens of the smallest musical abilities: yet, notwithstanding this, it was the general opinion of antiquity, that the swan was a most melodious bird, and that, even to its death, its voice went on improving. It would show no learning to produce what they have said upon the music of the swan: it has already been collected by Aldrovandus; and still more professedly by the Abbé Gedoyn, in the Transactions of the Academy of Belles Lettres. From these accounts it appears, that while Plato, Aristotle, and Diodorus Siculus, believed the vocality of the swan, Pliny and Virgil seem to doubt that received opinion. In this equipoise of authority, Aldrovandus seems to have determined in favour of the Greek philosophers; and the form of the windpipe in the wild swan, so much resembling a musical instrument, inclined his belief still more strongly. In aid of this also came the testimony of Pendasius, who affirmed, that he had often heard swans sweetly singing in the lake of Mantua, as he was rowed up and down in a boat; as also of Olaus Wormius, who professed that many of his friends and scholars had heard them singing. "There was," says he, in my family, a very honest young man, 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. affirm, that once in the territory of Dronten, as he was standing on the sea-shore early in the morning, he heard an unusual and sweet murmur, composed of the most pleasant whistlings and sounds: he knew not at first whence they came, or how they were made, for he saw no man near to produce them; but

looking round about him, and climbing to the top of a certain promontory, he there espied an infinite number of swans gathered together in a bay, and making the most delightful harmony; a sweeter in all his lifetime he had never heard." These were accounts sufficient at least to keep opinion in suspense, though in contradiction to our own experience; but Aldrovandus, to put, as he supposed, the question past all doubt, gives us the testimony of a countryman of our own, from whom he had the relation. This honest man's name was Mr. George Braun, who assured him, that nothing was more common in England than to hear swans sing; that they were bred in great numbers in the sea, near London; and that every fleet of ships that returned from their voyages from distant countries, were met by swans, that came joyfully out to welcome their return, and salute them with a loud and cheerful singing! It was in this manner that Aldrovandus, that great and good man, was frequently imposed upon by the designing and the needy: his unbounded curiosity drew round him people of every kind, and his generosity was as ready to reward falsehood as truth.-Poor Aldrovandus! after having spent a vast fortune, for the purposes of enlightening mankind; after having collected more truth and more falsehood than any man ever did before him, he little thought of being reduced at last to want bread, to feel the ingratitude of his country, and to die a beggar in a public hospital!

Thus it appears that our modern authorities, in favour of the singing of swans, are rather suspicious, since they are reduced to this Mr. George Braun, and John Rostorph, the native of a country remarkable for ignorance and credulity. It is probable the ancients had some mythological meaning in ascribing melody to the swan; and as for the moderns, they