One of the most favourite combinations is the FOX AND GOOSE, represented by a fox currant, with the neck of the goose in his mouth and the body cast over his back. It seems suggested by an incident in the old tale of “Reynard the Fox,” and was a subject which mediæval artists were never tired of representing; it occurs in stall carvings, as in Gloucester Cathedral; in the border of the Bayeux tapestry, and in endless MS. illuminations. It is, or was, a coat of arms borne by the families of Foxwist and Foxfeld. Derived from this sign are the FOX AND DUCK, (two in Sheffield,) and the FOX AND HEN, of which there is an example at Long Itchington. Reynard’s predatory habits are further illustrated by the FOX AND LAMB, in Pilgrim Street, Newcastle, in Allendale, &c., and the FOX AND GRAPES, borrowed from the fable. From the same well-known source also arose the sign of the FOX AND CRANE. But we see the punishment of all Reynard’s misdemeanours in the FOX AND HOUNDS, a sign of old standing, as there is one in Putney on a house which professes to have been “established above three hundred years.” The FOX AND OWL at Nottingham, seems to owe its origin to a curious _qui pro quo_ in language. A bunch of ivy, or ivy tod, was generally considered the favourite haunt of an _owl_; but a _tod_ also signifies a fox; and so the owl’s nest, owls-tod, may have led to the owl and tod, the fox and owl. The OWL’S NEST is still a sign at St Helen’s, Lancashire. _See under_ Bird Signs. In the sign of the FOX AND BULL, at Knightsbridge, the bull has been added of late years. About fifty years ago a magistrate used to sit once a week at this public-house to settle the small disputes of the neighbouring inhabitants. At that period Knightsbridge was still in such a benighted condition that neither a butcher’s nor draper’s shop was to be found between Hyde Park Corner and Sloane Street; and the whole locality could only boast of one stationer where note-paper and newspapers could be obtained. The voyage to London in those days was performed in a sort of lumbering stagecoach, over an ill-paved and dimly-lighted road. To this Fox Inn, by a very old wooden gate at the back, the bodies of the drowned in the Serpentine used to be conveyed, to the care of the Royal Humane Society, who had a receiving-house here. Among the many unhappy young and fair ones who were carried through that “_Lasciate-ogni-speranza_” gate, was Harriet Westbrook, the first wife of Shelley the poet, who had drowned herself in the Serpentine upon hearing that her husband had run off to Italy with Mary, the daughter of William Godwin, bookseller and philosopher of Snow Hill. The ancient inn remained much in its Elizabethan condition till the year 1799, when certain alterations cleared away the old-fashioned fire-places, chimney-pieces, and dog-irons, by which had sat the weather-beaten soldiers of Cromwell, the highwaymen lying in ambush for the mail coaches, and the fair London ladies out on a sly trip.