1 48 The Poets and Nat^lre. 



and Atseas of Kent ; and the cray-fish, also an English crest, 

 was the badge of the Prince of Orange, and betrayed that 

 warrior to imprisonment when he had hoped to escape 

 identification among a heap of the killed after the battle 

 of St. Aubin du Cormier. The crab frequently recurs in 

 heraldry the golden crabs of the Scropes, the Danbys, and 

 the Bytheseas. 



A scallop on a shield shows, or should show, that an 

 ancestor had been in the Crusades, as it was the cognisance 

 of St. James, and after him of all who fought against the 

 infidels, and so of all pious pilgrims. The badge of the 

 Order of St. James of Spain is a sword with a cross handle 

 and a scallop on the pommel. The same shell forms the 

 badge and collar of the Order of St. James in Holland, and 

 St. Louis instituted the " Order of the Ship and Escallop " 

 for the decoration of the nobility who accompanied him to 

 the Holy Land. The collar of the Order of St. Michael, 

 founded by Louis XL, was garnished with golden scallops. 

 The cockle, whelk, and several of the genera Turbo and 

 Cyprcea, found among modern crests and shields, date back 

 to the palmy days of Phoenicia, when Tyre and other cities 

 of the Mediterranean stamped their medals and coins with 

 them. 



But of course the most celebrated and popular shell crest 

 and device was the pearl-oyster. Charged with its precious 

 freight, it appears in a hundred forms, the legend always 

 repeating one or other of the curious and beautiful fancies 

 of antiquity. Every royal Margaret, by right of name, 

 claimed the precious thing as her emblem, Princes and 

 nobles bore it on their impresas, and the coronets of no- 

 bility take their degrees of rank from the pearls upon 

 them. 



The poets seem hardly to have done justice to these 

 beautiful houses tenantless, the shells, which once held the 

 happy creatures of the deeps. "Buoying shells, that on 



