Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/764

 732 S W A S W A bling Bewick's Swan, but with the coloured patches on the bill of less extent and deepening almost into scarlet. South America produces two very distinct birds commonly regarded as Swans, the Black-necked Swan and that which is called Cascaroba or Coscaroba. This last, which inhabits the southern extremity of the continent to Chili and the Argentine territory, and visits the Falkland Islands, is the smallest species known, pure white in colour except the tip of its primaries, but having a red bill and red feet. 1 The former, 0. melanocorypha or nigricollis, if not dis- covered by earlier navigators, was observed by Narbrough 2d August 1670 in the Strait of Magellan, as announced in 1694 in the first edition of his Voyage (p. 52). It was subsequently found on the Falkland Islands during the French settlement there in 1764-65, as stated by Pernetty (Voyage, ed. 2, ii. pp. 26, 99), and was first technically described in 1782 by Molina (Saggio sulla Stor. N'at. del Chile, pp. 234, 344). Its range seems to be much the same as that of the Cascaroba, except that it comes further to the northward, to the coast of southern Brazil on the east, and perhaps into Bolivia on the west. It is a very handsome bird, of large size, with a bright red nasal knob, a black neck, and the rest of its plumage pure white. It has been introduced into Europe, and breeds freely in confinement. A greater interest than attaches to the South-American birds last mentioned is that which invests the Black Swan of Australia. Considered for so many centuries to be an impossibility, the knowledge of its existence seems to have impressed (more perhaps than anything else) the popular mind with the notion of the extreme divergence not to say the contrariety of the organic products of that country. By a singular stroke of fortune we are able to name the precise day on which this unexpected discovery was made. The Dutch navigator Willem de Vlaming, visiting the west coast of Zuidland (Southland), sent two of his boats on the 6th of January 1697 to explore an estuary he had found. There their crews saw at first two and then more Black Swans, of which they caught four, taking two of them alive to Batavia; and Valentyn, who several years later recounted this voyage, gives in his work 2 a plate representing the ship, boats, and birds, at the mouth of what is now known from this circumstance as Swan River, the most important stream of the thriving colony of West Australia, which has adopted this very bird as its armorial symbol. Valentyn, however, was not the first to publish this interesting discovery. News of it soon reached Amsterdam, and the burgo- master of that city, Witsen by name, himself a fellow of the Royal Society, lost no time in communicating the chief facts ascertained, and among them the finding of the Black Swans, to Martin Lister, by whom they were laid before that society in October 1698, and printed in its Philosophical Transactions (xx. p. 361). Subsequent voyagers, Cook and others, found that the range of the species extended over the greater part of Australia, in many districts of which it was abundant. It has since rapidly decreased in numbers, and will most likely soon cease to exist as a wild bird, but its singular and ornamental appearance will probably preserve it as a modified captive in most civilized countries, and perhaps even now there are more Black Swans in a reclaimed condition in other lands than are at large in their mother-country. The species scarcely needs description : the sooty black of its general plumage is relieved by the snowy white of its flight-feathers and its coral-like bill banded with ivory. The Cygninse, admittedly form a well-defined group of the Family Anatidx, and there is now no doubt as to its limits, except in the case of the Cascaroba above mentioned. This bird would seem to be, as is so often found in members of the South- American fauna, a more generalized form, presenting several characteristics of the Anatinte, while the rest, even its Black-necked compatriot and the almost wholly Black Swan of Australia, have a higher morphological rank. Excluding from consideration the little-known C. davidi, of the five or six 3 species of the 1 Dr Stejneger (Proc. U. S. Nat. Museum, 1882, pp. 177-179) has been at much pains to shew that this is no Swan at all, but merely a large Anatine form. Further research may prove that his views are well founded, and that this, wit,h another very imperfectly known species, C. davidi, described by Swinhoe (Proc. Zool. Society, 1870, p. 430) from a single specimen in the Museum of Peking, should be removed from the Sub-Family Cygninx. Of C, coscoroba Mr Gibson remarks (Ibis, 1880, pp. 36, 37) that its "note is a loud trumpet-call," and that it swims with "the neck curved and the wings raised after the true Swan model." 2 Commonly quoted as Oud en Nieuw Oost Indien (Amsterdam, 1726). The incidents of the voyage are related in Deel iii. Hoofdst. iv. (which has for its title Description of Banda) pp. 68-71. 3 The C. unwini doubtfully described by Mr Hume (Ibis, 1871, pp. 412, 413) from India, though recognized by Dr Stejneger (ut supra), seems to be only the immature of the Mute Swan. Northern hemisphere four present the curious character^ somewhat analogous to that found in certain CRANES (vol. vi. p. 546), of the penetration of the sternum by the trachea nearly to the posterior end of the keel, whence it returns forward and upward again to revert and enter the lungs ; but in the two larger of these species, when adult, the loop of the trachea between the walls of- the keel takes a vertical direction, while in the two smaller the be'nd is horizontal, thus affording an easy mode of recognizing the respective species of each. 4 Fossil remains of more than one species of Swan have been found. The most remark- able is C. falconeri, which was nearly a third larger than the Mute Swan, and was described from a Maltese cave by Prof. Parker in the Zoological Transactions (vi. pp. 119- 124, pi. 30). (A. N.) SWANSEA, a municipal and parliamentary borough and large seaport of Glamorganshire, South Wales, is finely situated in an angle between lofty hills, on the river Tawe, Plan of Swansea. near its mouth in the beautiful Swansea Bay, a recess of the Bristol Channel, and on the Great Western, London and North- Western, Midland, and Rhonclda and Swansea Bay railway lines, 45 miles west-north-west of Cardiff. Being for the most part of comparatively modern growth, the streets are laid out with great regularity. Swan- sea retains few traces of antiquity, and some of its more picturesque features have been destroyed to make room for the construction of docks. Of the old castle, 4 The correct scientific nomenclature of the Swans is a matter that offers many difficulties, but they are of a kind far too technical to have any interest for the general reader. Dr Stejneger, in his learned "Outlines of a Monograph" of the group (ut supra], has employed much research on the subject, with the result (which can only be deemed unhappy) of upsetting nearly all other views hitherto existing, and propounding some which few ornithologists outside of his adopted country are likely to accept, since the principles on which he has gone are not those commonly received, nor (it may perhaps be added) are based on common sense. In the text, as above written, care has been taken to use names which will cause little if any misunderstand- ing, and this probably is all that can be said in the present state of confusion.