The ornithology of Francis Willughby of Middleton in the county of Warwick Esq, fellow of the Royal Society in three books : wherein all the birds hitherto known, being reduced into a method sutable to their natures, are accurately described : the descriptions illustrated by most elegant figures, nearly resembling the live birds, engraven in LXXVII copper plates : translated into English, and enlarged with many additions throughout the whole work : to which are added, Three considerable discourses, I. of the art of fowling, with a description of several nets in two large copper plates, II. of the ordering of singing birds, III. of falconry / by John Ray ...

§. I. The tame Swan: Cygnus mansuetus.

THis Bird is much the biggest of all whole-footed Water-fowl with broad Bills. An old one we made trial of weighed twenty pounds: From the tip of the Bill to the end of the Tail was fifty five inches long, to the end of the Feet fifty seven. The distance between the tips of the Wings extended was seven foot and eight inches.

The whole body is covered with a soft, delicate Plumage, in the old ones purely white, in the young ones grey. The quils of the greater Wing-feathers in this Bird are greater than in the wild Swan.

The Bill in the young ones of the first year is of a lead colour, having a round nail as it were at the tip, and a black line on each side from the Nosthrils to the Head. From the Eyes to the Bill is a triangular space, bare of feathers, of a black colour, the base whereof respects the Bill, the vertex the Eyes. In old ones the Bill is red, the hook or nail at the end being black. Above at the base of the Bill grows a great Lobe of tuberous flesh of a black colour, bending forward or downward. The space un∣der the Eyes always continues black. The Tongue is indented or toothed: The Feet

of a lead colour, bare a little above the knee. The inmost Toe hath a lateral mem∣brane appendant. The Claws are black.

The stomach is furnished with thick and strong muscles: The Guts have eight or nine revolutions, and are large. The Wind-pipe in this kind enters not the Breast-bone. Wherefore Aldrovand doth not rightly infer that Aristotle never dissected this Fowl, because he makes no mention of this ingress, and of the strange figure of the Wind-pipe. For this is proper to the wild Swan, not common to both kinds; we having not observed such a conformation of the Wind-pipe in any of those tame Swans we have dissected. Aldrovandus therefore thinking there was but one kind of Swan, viz. that which he dissected, did erroneously attribute what was proper to that one kind, to the Swan in general. We have opened two wild Swans, and in both have observed the Wind-pipe so to enter the cavity of the Breast-bone, and to be there so reflected as Aldrovandus hath expressed both in words and figures: Of tame Swans we have anatomized many, and in all have observed the wind-pipe to descend streight down into the Lungs without any such digression or reflection.

It is a very long-lived fowl, so that it is thought to attain the age of three hundred years: Which (saith Aldrovandus) to me seems not likely. For my part, I could easily be induced to believe it: For that I have been assured by credible persons that a Goose will live a hundred years or more. But that a Swan is much longer-lived than a Goose, if it were not manifest in experience, yet are there many convincing argu∣ments to prove, viz. that in the same kind it is bigger: That it hath harder, firmer, and more solid flesh: That it sits longer on its Eggs before it hatches them. For, that I may invert Plinies words, Those creatures live longest that are longest born in the Womb. Now incubation answers to gestation. For the Egg is as it were an expo∣sed Womb with the young enclosed, which in viviparous Animals are cherished, and, as I may so say, hatched within the body, in oviparous Animals without the body, by the warmth of the old one sitting upon them.

The Swan feeds not upon fish, but either upon herbs growing in the water, and their roots and seeds, or upon Worms, and other Insects, and shell-fish. Albertus writes truly, that its flesh is black and hard. As the Bird it self is far bigger than a Goose, so its flesh is blacker, harder, and tougher, having grosser fibres, hard of di∣gestion, of a bad and melancholic juice: Yet for its rarity serves as a dish to adorn great mens Tables at Feasts and entertainments, being else in my opinion no desirable dainty. It lays seven or eight Eggs, and sits near two months before its young ones be hatcht.

They make use of the skin, the grosser feathers pluckt off, and only the Down left, and so drest, as a defensative against cold, especially to cover and cherish the Breast and Stomach.