by its periodical migrations, which are supposed to be directed to the holy Lake of Manasa, in the mythical regions of the Himalaya.  The poet Kalidas, in his Cloud Messenger, speaks of the hanza as “eager to set out for the Sacred Lake.”  Hence, according to the Rajavali, the lion was pre-eminent amongst beasts, “the hanza was king over all the feathered tribes."[1] In one of the Jatakas, which contains the legend of Buddha’s apotheosis, his hair, when suspended in the sky, is described as resembling “the beautiful Kala hanza."[2] The goose is, at the present day, the national emblem emblazoned on the standard of Burmah, and the brass weights of the Burmese are generally cut in the shape of the sacred bird, just as the Egyptians formed their weights of stone after the same model.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Rajavali, p. 149.  The Mahawanso, ch. xxx. p. 179, also speaks of the “hanza,” as amongst the decorations chased on the stem of a bo-tree, modelled in gold, which was deposited by Dutugaimunu when building the Ruanwelle dagoba at Anarajapoora in the 2nd century before Christ.]

[Footnote 2:  HARDY’S Buddhism, ch. vii p. 161.]

[Footnote 3:  See SYME’S Embassy to Ava, p. 330; YULE’S Narrative of the British Mission to Ava in 1855, p. 110.  I have seen a stone in the form of a goose, found in the ruins of Nineveh, which appears to have been used as a weight.]

[Illustration:  From the Burmese standard.]

Augustine, in his Civitas Dei, traces the respect for the goose, displayed by the Romans, to their gratitude for the safety of the capital; when the vigilance of this bird defeated the midnight attack by the Goths.  The adulation of the citizens, he says, degenerated afterwards almost to Egyptian superstition, in the rites instituted in honour of their preservers on that occasion.[1] But the very fact that the geese which saved the citadel were already sacred to Juno, and domesticated in her temple, demonstrates the error of Augustine, and shows that they had acquired mythological eminence, before achieving political renown.  It must be observed, too, that the birds which rendered that memorable service, were the ordinary white geese of Europe[2], and not the red goose of the Nile (the [Greek:  chenalopex] of Herodotus), which, ages before, had been enrolled amongst the animals held sacred in Egypt, and which formed the emblem of Seb, the father of Osiris.[3] HORAPOLLO, endeavouring to account for this predilection of the Egyptians (who employed the goose hieroglyphically to denote a son), ascribes it to their appreciation of the love evinced by it for its offspring, in exposing itself to divert the attention of the fowler from its young.[4] This opinion was shared by the Greeks and the Romans.  Aristotle praises its sagacity; AElian dilates on the courage and cunning of the “vulpanser,” and its singular attachment to man[5]; and Ovid ranks the goose as superior to the dog in the scale of intelligence,—­