“Steeds were consecrated to the sun.”—(Idem, p. 1016.)
The crow, “anciently the symbol of Venus,” was “superseded by the owl.”—(Idem, p. 1024.)
The cock was “the symbol of courage, ... consecrated to Mars; also to Minerva, to Bellona, to Mercury, to Esculapius.”—(Idem, p. 1029.)
A flock of geese was kept on the Capitoline Hill in memory of the story that they had saved Rome,—a story which it is safe to say had no foundation in fact.
The raven “was the ensign of the Danes.”—(Idem, p. 1030.)
“So revered is he (the fox) that no place in a Mantchurian temple is too high for him.”—(H. E. M. James, “The Long White Mountain,” London, 1888, p. 190.)
“The serpent also is greatly feared and worshipped; so is the hare.”—(Idem, p. 192.)
The peacock was sacred to Juno, whose car was drawn by those birds. Pliny says that the peacock was reported to swallow its own excrement, as if envying man the possession of a treasure so precious. When the dung of the peacock was administered in epilepsy, vertigo, etc., the medicine was to be taken from the new moon to the full. Juno was a lunar deity.
“It was an ancient and wide-spread custom in Europe to bestow names of honor on these three” (bear, wolf, and fox).—(Grimm, “Teutonic Mythology,” vol. ii. p. 667.)
“The Gypsies call the bear ‘vieux,’ or ‘grand-père.’”—(Idem, foot-note, quoting Victor Hugo’s “Notre Dame de Paris.”)