It will not, perhaps, be irrelevant to this subject to advert to the story
of Albertus Aquensis (in _Gesta Dei per Francos_, p. 196.), regarding a
_Goose and a Goat_, which in the second crusade were considered as "divino
spiritu afflati," and made "duces viæ in Jerusalem." Well may it be
mentioned by the histoian as "scelus omnibus fidelibus incredibile;" but
the imputation serves to show that the Christians of that age forgot what a
heathen poet could have taught them,--

[Greek: "Eis oiônos aristos amynesthai peri patrês."]

T.J.

[Footnote 9: With this solecism in the printed _Flores Historiarum_ I find
that a MS. in the Chetham Library agrees, the abbreviative mark used in the
Hundred Rolls of Edward I. for the terminations _us_ and _er_ having been
affixed to this participle.]

[Footnote 10: To the passages I have elsewhere referred to on _The Concert
of Nature_, from Ausonius, Epistle 25., and Spenser's _Faerie Queen_, book
ii. canto xii. st. 71., "divine respondence meet" is made by the last lines
in Tennyson's _Dying Swan_.]

_Swearing by Swans_ (Vol. ii., p. 392.).--The quotation given by your
correspondent E.T.M. (Vol. ii., p. 451.), only increases my desire to
receive a reply to my query on this subject, since he has adduced a
parallel custom. What are the earliest notices of the usage of swearing by
swans and pheasants? Was the pheasant ever considered a _royal_ bird?

R.V.