While on the one hand Julius Scaliger vituperates Cardan for “lauding the nonsense of the poets, and the mendacity of the Greeks about the singing of the swan,” Aldrovand cites on their behalf the testimony of one Frederico Pendasio, a celebrated professor of philosophy and a person worthy of credit, who told him that he had frequently heard swans singing melodiously while he was sailing on the Mantuan Lake; also that one George Braun had heard the swans near London “sing festal songs.” Besides this, Mr. Rennie says, Olius Wormius professed that many of his friends and scholars had heard them singing, and proceeded to give the experience of one 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 seashore 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 life-time he had never heard.” To this testimony Goldsmith appends his personal opinion in the following words: “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.” Goldsmith’s own belief was that the ancients had some mythological meaning in ascribing melody to the swan, “and as for the moderns, they scarcely deserve our regard. The swan must, therefore, be content with that share of fame that it possesses on the score of its beauty, since the melody of its voice, without better testimony, will scarcely be admitted by even the credulous.” This better testimony is furnished by Charles de Kay, who says that modern bird-lovers have heard the swans of Russia singing their own dirge in the North, when, having lingered too long before migration, reduced in strength by lack of food, and frozen fast to the ice where they have rested over night, they clang their lives out, even as the ancients said.