496 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
that of the fowl, as its habits respecting the de- 
posit of its eggs, and its ineubation, prove ; but 
the goose, as a domesticated bird, kept near the 
house, and fed by man, was known to Homer (see 
Odyssey, xv. 161. 174.; xix. 536. 552.) ; whereas 
Homer never mentions the barn-door fowl. In 
the time of Theognis, however, about 540 B.c., 
the crowing of the cock was a familiar sign of the 
morning (v. 864.); and Aristophanes mentions 
the domestic fowl under the name of “the Per- 
sian bird” (Av. 488.712.) ; a name which it had 
doubtless acquired in its way to Greece from 
India, its native country. (See Penny Cyclop., 
art. “ Pheasants;” Buffon, Oiseaux, tom. iii. art. 
coq. 
®, mention either of the goose or of the duck 
occurs in the Bible. The domestic fowl is not 
mentioned in the Old Testament; but the crowing 
of the cock is a well-known incident in the story 
of St. Peter, and the maternal love of the hen is 
alluded to in Matth. xxiii. 37., Luke xiii. 34. 
It may be doubted whether the tame goose was 
a bird commonly kept in Greece. Camus (Notes 
sur l Hist. d Anim. d Aristote, p. 603.) remarks that 
Aristotle, unlike the moderns, does not in his 
Natural History distinguish between the wild and 
the tame goose. Plato likewise, in his Politicus, 
§ 8., represents one interlocutor saying to the 
other, that even if he has not travelled over the 
Thessalian plains, he has heard of establishments 
for feeding geese and cranes, and believes in their 
existence ; thereby implying that such establish- 
ments were not then commonly to be seen in 
Greece. 
Nevertheless the flesh of geese, as a dainty, was 
familiar to the Greeks, and to some of the neigh- 
bouring nations, though it seems to have been 
unknown tothe Jews. Herodotus (ii. 37.) speaks 
of the Egyptian priests being supplied with abund- 
ance of beef and goose; and Euripides combines 
the flesh of this bird with veal, as an article of lux- 
urious diet. (Cress. Fragm., 13.) 'Theopompus, 
the historian, related that when Agesilaus went to 
Egypt, the Egyptians sent him a present of fatted 
geese and calves. (Athen., ix. 32., where other in- 
stances of fatted geese are cited.) 
The duck was doubtless known as a tifine bird 
to the Greeks (see Aristoph., Plut.1011.). Other 
passages of Aristophanes, which mention the 
duck, Ach. 841., Pac. 494., Av. 569., may refer to 
the wild bird; nor is the chapter in Athenzus 
upon ducks (ix. 52.) decisive. Detailed precepts 
for the breeding of ducks are, however, given by 
the Roman writers on husbandry. (Varro, R. R., 
iil. 11.; Columeila, viii. 15.) Cicero, too, speaks 
of the hatching of ducks’ eggs by hens, and of the 
distress of the hen at seeing the ducklings take to 
the water, in language such as we might use at 
present. (De Nat. Deor., ii. 48.) 
The Romans were likewise well acquainted 
with the breeding of the tame goose; full in- 
structions for the management of it are given by 
their writers, (Varro, R. R., iii. 10.; Columella, 
viii. 13, 14.). From the Romans its use was pro- 
bably propagated over the whole of western Eu- 
rope: Cesar (B. G., v.12.) says that the ancient 
Britons considered it unlawful to eat the flesh of 
the domestic fowl and the goose, but that they 
bred these birds for their amusement. This su- 
perstitious d@jection to the goose was probably 
of no long duration in Britain, and it certainly 
was not shared by the Gauls. Indeed, the use of 
the goose became so universal in western Europe 
during the later ages of the empire, that this bird 
lost its classical name of anser, and acquired, in 
medieval Latin, the name of auca, contracted 
from avica, a diminutive of avis. It was called 
“the bird,” because it was the most useful of do- 
mestic fowls ; as Homer was called by the Greeks 
“the poet;” as the Holy Scriptures were called 
“the book;” and as the ox was in Low Latin 
called “the animal” (awmaille in old French). 
From auca are derived the Italian and Spanish 
oca, and the French oie. As this form is feminine, 
the Romance languages have no word which pro- 
perly designates a gander; and hence to mark 
the sex, the French says La meére oie, Mother 
Goose. (Ducange in auca; Diez, Roman. Worterb. 
in ocd.) 
Le Grand D’Aussy tells us that in ancient 
France the goose held for many centuries the first 
place among poultry; it enjoyed this honour at 
the table of kings. Charlemagne, in three pas- 
sages of his Capitularies, directs that all his 
country houses should be furnished with them: 
the old proverb alludes to the goose being kept by 
the king, “ Qui mange l’oie du roi, cent ans apres 
ilen rend la plume.” It was the great dainty of 
the commonalty and of the citizens. But it has 
(he adds) lost its ancient consideration, and is 
now (1782) only admitted to the tables of the 
middle class. (Vie Privée des Frangais, tom. i. 
p. 294.) The above proverb corresponds to the 
maxim of English law, “ Nullum tempus occurrit 
regi.” See Le Roux de Lincy, Proverbes Fran- 
ais, vol. ii. p. 75. 
According to Cibrario, Economia del Medio 
Evo, vol. iii. p.113., a goose baked in an oven, 
with a stuffing of garlic and quince, was an ex- 
quisite dish at Florence in the time of the novelist 
Franco Sacchetti, that is, in the latter half of the 
fourteenth century. 
Buffon, too, says that the goose was the dainty 
of our ancestors, but that since the introduction 
of the turkey from America, it has sunk to the 
second place at our tables and in our poultry 
ards. 
x The geese which saved the Capitol are described 
as having been sacred to Juno: other deities, 
however, showed a fondness for this bird. Ju- 
[204 S, No 25., June 21.756. - 
eine iii Scat a i a 
