Swan

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

a family of aquatic birds closely related to the duck and the goose. Two species, the whistling and the trumpeter swan, breed in British America , migrating for the winter to the Gulf. Twenty-five years ago the trumpeter was a summer resident in the upper Mississippi Valley, but is seen rarely now, save as in early April V-shaped flocks pass overhead on the way to the Hudson Bay country. Geese and pelicans seem to fly against the very heavens, but the flight of the majestic swan is far higher. When they reach an unfrequented region, they descend gradually, flying round and round in large circles nearer and nearer the earth until, if no sign of danger be seen, they alight. The trumpeter stands five feet high. The color, save black bill and legs, is snowy white. The whistling swan is a trifle smaller. There are numerous world species of swans, including a proverbially impossible black swan produced by Australia. The swan of literature is still found wild in the more desolate parts of northeastern Europe and northern Asia. Though a hissing, pugnacious, quarrelsome bird, it is an indispensable ornament of ponds and streams in the private and public grounds of Europe. It has been introduced widely in America. The typical nest of a swan is a wide mass of rushes and reeds, lined with down, near the water's edge, preferably on an islet. The female lays from five to seven dull greenish white eggs four inches long. The long, graceful neck of the swan contains twenty-three vertebrae. It is designed to fish up the roots and seeds of aquatic plants, though snails and small shellfish generally are not at all amiss. The young of the swan, called cygnets, have bluish gray plumage. The proverbially graceful carriage of the swan in the water merits the following couplet from Wordsworth's Yarrow Revisited: The swan on still St. Mary's lake Float double, swan and shadow. To the ancients the swan was known as the bird of Apollo. In some way a tradition arose that the dying swan sang with remarkable musical power. Shakespeare, himself called the "Sweet Swan of Avon," used the tradition in the Merchant of Venice, "Makes a swan-like end, fading in music," and again in Othello, "I will play the swan and die in music."