390 SOME ETHNOGRAPHIC PHASES OE CONCHOLOGY. 



in the arms of various religious houses, as well as of individual palmers 

 and crusaders of rank : but it was adopted among the insignia of 

 more than one medieval order, and as such re-appeared in a form 

 analogous to the more ancient collars and necklaces of primitive 

 British graves. The knights of the Order of St. Louis, instituted hy 

 that royal crusader, Louis IX., received from their escallop badge, 

 the title du navire et des coquilles ; and those of St. Michael, another 

 French order instituted by Louis XL, wore a golden collar of scallop 

 shells, and thence were styled chevaliers de la coquille. 



A reference to these relics of medieval pilgrimage would not be 

 complete without noticing the convenient argument resorted to by 

 Voltaire, to upset the evidence adduced by the geologists of the eigh- 

 teenth century, from the abundance of fossil shells found in the interior 

 of continents, and at high elevations, in proofs of a universal deluge. 

 Compar-ed with the conclusions of the diluvial geologist, even the 

 exploded theories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries recovered 

 favor in the estimation of the sceptical philosopher. " Perhaps," says 

 Dr. Plot, in his Natural History of Oxfordshire"^ they may have 

 remained from the creation, when God dispersing the seminal virtue 

 of animals through the universe, where it met with an agreeable 

 matrix, as in the waters, there it produced shell fish in their perfection, 

 and where it met with an improper matrix, as in the earth, imperfec- 

 tion only. However, as Gaffarell thinks, it proceeded as far forth as 

 it could, and gave the same shape to stones, earths, &c., as it should 

 have done to the shellfish !" Shifting his ground, however, from such 

 pleasant fancies of older philosophers, which, like the ingenious analo- 

 gies of the modern author of Omphalos, thus easily accounted for 

 fossils as the abortions or mere sports of nature : Voltaire ad- 

 mitted the marine origin and genuineness of fossil shells gathered on 

 the Alps and other elevated inland regions, but with specious sophis- 

 try accounted for their presence in such unlikely localities, by affirming 

 that they were eastern specimens dropped by pilgrims returning from 

 the Holy Laad ! The sophistical argument, could it only be main- 

 tained, would furnish evidence of an antiquity and universality of 

 pilgrimage to eastern shrines, such as never entered into the most 

 enthusiastic dream of medieval hagiologist, or monkish chronicler of 

 palmers' adventures. 



*Plot's Nat. His. of Oxfordsliire, 2d edition, p. 144. N. & Q., 2d series, p. 82, Jan, 31, 1858. 



