CRESSET 



CRETACEOUS SYSTEM 



pungent, are less used in salads in this country 

 than on the Continent and in America. Water 

 Cress (Nasturtium officinale] is an aquatic peren- 

 nial species of the same natural order, largely 

 cultivated in England and on the Continent 

 in slowly running brooks and ditches, where the 

 water is pure and the bottom gravelly. In stagnant 

 water and a muddy bottom the plant soon perishes. 

 For the so-called Indian Cress, see NASTURTlUJfl. 



Cressida. See TROILUS. 



Cressy. See CRE9Y. 



Cresylite. See SHELL, Vol. IX. p. 386. 



Crest ( Lat. crista, ' a comb or tuft ' ), a heraldic 

 figure or ornament, which in its original use sur- 

 mounted the helmet. Though often popularly 

 regarded as the most important part of the heraldic 

 insignia of a family, it is, in the eyes of heralds, 

 an accessory without which the bearing is com- 

 plete. The practice of ornamenting the helmet 

 with a capriciously assumed figure existed in 

 classical times ; but no such usage is found in the 

 early middle ages, or at the time when heraldry 

 had its rise. Crests first appear occasionally 

 on the helmets of knights in the 13th century, 

 and were a mark of dignity and estate beyond 

 what was implied by the use of arms. Edward 

 III. was the first English king who assumed 

 a crest ; and crests are found in use by the early 

 Knights of the Garter. The practice gradually 

 spread, particularly in England, till the crest 

 became trie almost indispensable adjunct of a shield 

 of arms, as it now is. On the Continent there are 

 still many families of distinction who have never 

 used a crest. The crest is generally placed on a 

 Wreath (q.v. ) of the principal metal and colour of 

 the shield sometimes, however, it is ( by permis- 

 sion of the sovereign or king-at-arms ) allowed to 

 issue out of a ducal coronet, mural crown, or 

 cap of maintenance. Different crests are, in 

 modern times, often assigned to separate branches 

 of the same family, and there are many crests 

 which so many families have in common that they 

 are hardly distinctive. No ladies except sovereign 

 princesses can, with any propriety, attach a crest 

 to their arms. The assumption of crests by church- 

 men is equally objectionable. Corporations occa- 

 sionally use them, a practice for wnich precedent 

 may be shown from the 15th century. Crests are 

 not to be confounded with family badges, which 

 were never placed on a helmet, and ought not to be 

 borne on a wreath. See BADGE ; Fairbairn's Crests 

 (2 vols. new ed. 1893), and Knight and Butters' 

 Crests (2 vols. 1885). 



Creste, in Architecture, an ornamental finish- 

 ing, either in stone, or of tiles or metal, running 



Creste, 13th century (from Viollet le Due). 



along the top of a wall or the ridge of a roof. Such 

 crestings were adopted by the Romanesque archi- 

 tects from the East, but the designs were soon 

 made after their own style. Elaborate ornaments 

 of this kind were frequently used in Gothic build- 

 ings. In modern times cast-iron has been greatly 



used for such ornaments, many roofs being covered 

 with gilded iron rails or crests. 



Cresswell, SIR CRESSWELL, judge, born in 

 Newcastle in 1794, was educated at Charterhouse 

 and Cambridge, and called to the bar in 1819. Be- 

 tween 1822 and 1830 he issued, with Barnewall, 

 a valuable series of Reports; in 1830 he was ap- 

 pointed recorder of Hull, and in 1834 a king'* 

 counsel. He was returned to Parliament by Liver- 

 pool in 1837 and 1841, and in 1842 Peel made him 

 a puisne judge. He sat in the Court of Common 

 Pleas till 1858, when he was appointed first judge 

 of the newly-created Probate and Divorce Court, 

 the success of which was mainly due to him. He 

 was especially distinguished in will cases and casea 

 in mercantile and navigation law. He died shortly 

 after a carriage accident, 29th July 1863. 



Crestien de Troyes. See CHRESTIEN. 



4 'ITS I on, a town of Union county, Iowa, 115 

 miles W. of Ottumwa. It is connected by railway 

 with Burlington, Chicago, and St Joseph, and ha 

 large machine-shops and railway-carriage works. 

 Pop. (1870) 411 ; (1890) 7200. There is a smaller 

 town of Creston in Wyoming, and a third in Illinois. 



Creswick, THOMAS, R.A., a popular landscape- 

 painter, was born at Sheffield, 5th February 1811. 

 He early exhibited a taste for drawing, and removed 

 to London in 1828, where two of his pictures during 

 that year found a place in the Royal Academy's 

 exhibition. Creswick loved to paint the beautiful 

 streams, and glens, and wooded dells of his native 

 land ; and these, which, along with some coast 

 scenes, form the subject of his best paintings, are 

 represented on his canvas with great delicacy of 

 finished detail and truth of aerial perspective, the 

 figures introduced being frequently from the brush 

 of Ansdell, Cooper, Frith, and other artists. He 

 Avas well known as a book-illustrator by his draw- 

 ings for the wood-engravers, and he contributed to 

 the publications of the English Etching Club. He 

 was elected an A.R.A. in 1842, an R. A. in 1851. 

 He died 28th December 1869. More than a hundred 

 of his works were collected in the London Inter- 

 national Exhibition of 1873. 



Cretaceous System, the highest division of 

 the Mesozoic or Secondary strata, rests conformably 

 upon the Jurassic System (q.v.), and is overlaid 

 unconformably by the oldest deposits of the Eocene 

 System (q.v.). The cretaceous strata of Britain 

 are confined chiefly to the east and south-east of 

 England. They form the Yorkshire Wolds, extend 

 over large parts of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Hertford, 

 and compose the Chiltern Hills, Salisbury Plain, the 

 Downs, and the south part of the Isle of Wight. 

 On the Continent the cretaceous rocks have a con- 

 siderable development. They form a broad basin 

 in the north of France, and stretch eastward from 

 Belgium, Holland. Denmark, and the south of 

 Sweden, through the great plains of northern 

 Europe to the south end of the Ural Mountains. 

 But over extensive regions within that wide area 

 they lie more or less concealed under younger 

 formations. There is another extensive develop- 

 ment of cretaceous strata in southern Europe, 

 where they enter largely into the composition of 

 many of the Mediterranean coast-lands. The chief 

 petrological feature of the cretaceous strata of 

 western and northern Europe is the great develop- 

 ment of white chalk in tne Anglo-French area, 

 and its gradual replacement, when followed east- 

 wards into Germany, &c., by earthy limestones, 

 shales, sandstones, &c. The most marked charac- 

 teristic of the cretaceous system in southern Europe 

 is the great development in that region of massive 

 marine limestone ( hippurite limestone ). 



In North America cretaceous strata likewise occur 

 in force, especially in the western states and 



