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 ...

CHAP. I. Of the Swan: De Cygno.

§. 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.

§. II. A wild Swan, called also an Elk, and in some places a Hooper.

IT weighs less than a tame Swan, not exceeding two hundred sixty five ounces, or sixteen pound three quarters, Its length from the tip of the Bill to the end of the Feet was sixty inches, to the end of the Tail fifty six. The figure of the body is the same with the tame Swans: The colour white, yet not all over so white as the tame Swans: For the middle of the Back, and the smaller covert-feathers of the Wings are cinereous: Sometimes also here and there a brown feather is mixt with the white ones in the Back. Each Wing hath thirty eight quils. The first feather of the bastard-wing is longer than ordinary, as in the tame Swan: The quils much less than in that. The Bill towards the tip, and as far as the Nosthrils, is black: Thence to the Head covered with a yellow membrane. [Mr. Willughby describes the Bill a little differently thus. The upper Mandible is moveable, from the Eyes to the Nosthrils bare, and of a fair yellow colour, beyond the Nosthrils black. The lower Mandible is black, but the membrane under the Chin yellow.] The Legs are bare of feathers a little above the knees, of a dusky yellow, as are also the Feet. The Wind-pipe after a strange and wonderful manner enters the Breast-bone in a cavity prepared for it, and is therein reflected, and after its egress at the divarication is contracted into a narrow compass by a broad and bony cartilage, then being divided into two branches goes on to the Lungs. These branches before they enter the Lungs are dilated, and as it were swoln out into two cavities.

On the sides of the Rump grow two huge glandules, out of which by a light pressure may be squeezed a certain glutinous substance like to ear-wax, wherewith she anoints and composes her feathers. But these glandules are not peculiar to this Bird, though perchance greater and more remarkable in her, but common to all. The Bird we described was a Female. The knot or bunch of Eggs was situate far within the body, between the very Lobes of the Lungs. The Wind-pipe enters the breast-bone, and comes out again below the Merry-thought: The stomach is very fleshy, and furnished with thick muscles. Above the Stomach the Gullet is dilated into a bag, thick-set, and as it were granulated within with many papillary glandules, ex∣cerning a kind of Saliva, which serves as a menstruum to macerate the meat.

The Wind-pipe reflected in form of a Trumpet seems to be so contrived and formed by nature for modulating the voice. Hence what the Ancients have delivered con∣cerning the singing of Swans (if it be true, which I much doubt) seems chiefly to agree to this bird, and not to the tame Swan.

For my part, those stories of the Ancients concerning the singing of Swans, viz. that those Birds at other times, but especially when their death approaches, do with a most sweet and melodious modulation of their voice, sing their own Naenia or funeral song, seemed to me always very unlikely and fabulous, and to have been therefore not un∣deservedly exploded by Scaliger and others. Howbeit Aldrovandus, weighing on both sides the Arguments and Authorities of learned men, hath (he saith) observed them to be equal; wherefore to cast the scale, and establish the affirmative, he thinks that wonderful structure of the Wind-pipe, by him first observed, is of weight suffi∣cient. But this Argument though it be very specious and plausible, yet doth it not conclude the controversie. For we have observed in the Wind-pipe of the Crane the like ingress into the cavity of the Breast-bone, and reflection therein, or a more re∣markable one; yet no man, that I know of, ever commended the Crane for singing, or musical modulation of its voice. But if you ask me, to what purpose then doth the Wind-pipe enter into the breast-bone, and is in that manner reflected there? I must in∣genuously confess, I do not certainly and fully know. Yet may there be other rea∣sons assigned thereof; as that which * 1.1 Aldrovand alledges in the first place, 1. That whereas sometimes for almost half an hours space the Swan continues with her heels up, and her head under water, seeking and gathering up her food from the bottom of the Pool or River she swims in, that part of the Wind-pipe enclosed in the breast-bone may supply her with air enough to serve her all that while. So the use of it will be to be a store-house of air, for the advantage of diving and continuing long under water. 2. This kind of structure doth undoubtedly conduce much to the increasing the strength and force of the voice. For that the wild Swan hath a very loud and shrill cry, and which may be heard a long way off, the English name Hooper, imposed upon it (as I suppose) from its hooping and hollowing noise doth import.

Hence it appears how uncertain and fallacious a way of arguing it is from the final cause. For though Nature, Gods ordinary Minister, always acts for some end, yet what that is we are often ignorant, and it doth not rarely fall out to be far different from what we fancy: Nay we may be deceived when we think we are most sure, and imagine it can be no other than what we have presumed.

Wherefore I make more account of the testimonies he alledges; as of Frederick Pendasius, that affirmed he had often heard Swans singing sweetly in the Lake of Man∣tua, as he was rowed up and down in a Boat. But as for the testimony of George Braun concerning flocks of Swans in the Sea near London, meeting, and as it were welcoming the Fleets of Ships returning home with loud and chearful singing, is with∣out doubt most false: We having never heard of any such thing.

* 1.2 Olaus Wormius of late confirms the opinion of Aldrovand, and the reports of the Ancients concerning the singing of Swans, producing the Testimonies of some of his familiars and Scholars who professed themselves to have heard their music. There was (saith he) in my Family a very honest young man, one Mr. John Rostorph Student in Divinity, a Norwegian by Nation. This man did upon his credit, and with the interposition of an Oath solemnly affirm, that himself in the Territory of Dronten did once by the Sea-shore early in the Morning hear an unusual and most sweet murmur composed of most pleasant whistlings and sounds: Which, when as he knew not whence it came, or how it was made, for that he saw no man near which might be the author of it, looking round about him, and climbing up the top of a certain Pro∣montory, he espied an infinite number of Swans gathered together in a Bay of the Sea near hand, making that harmony; a sweeter than which in all his lives time he

had never heard. By some Islanders, my Scholars, I have been told, that nothing is more frequent with them than this harmony, in those places where there are Swans. This I therefore alledge, that it may appear that the report of those famous ancient Authors concerning the singing of Swans is not altogether vain, but attested and proved by modern experiments. Thus far Wormius. Let the Readers judge whe∣ther his witnesses be sufficient.

This Bird hath not as yet, that I know of, been described by any Author.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Ornithol. t. 3. p. 19.
• * 1.2

  Masae. book 3. chap. 13.