98 HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY. 



bine, green, and black. Y'ellow and white were not employed as tinctures, 

 but represent gold and silver. Purple, as approaching to red, and violet as a 

 combination of red and blue, are used ; and in England, also the blood red, 

 and the orange or tenny, a mixture of yellow and red. If, as in copperplate 

 engravings, woodcuts, &c., the actual colors were not put on, it was once 

 customary to express them by their initials, G. S. I. Gr. B. Bl. B. ; or by 

 planetary symbols (jpZ. 27, figs. 14—20). At a later period they were 

 indicated by dots and lines, thus : gold was expressed by dots (fig. 14) ; 

 silver by a plain surface, without dots or lines {fig. 15) ; red by perpen- 

 dicular lines {fig. 16) ; blue by horizontal lines {fig. 11) ; green by diagonal 

 lines, from left to right {fig. 19); purple by the reverse of green {fig. 20); 

 black by the intersection of horizontal and perpendicular lines {fig. 18) ; 

 iron, by diagonal lines crossing each other {fig. 21). Blood red was ex- 

 pressed in the same manner as iron ; and the tenny by perpendicular lines, 

 intersected by left diagonal ones. 



Metals must always alternate with colors ; a figure of metal must be 

 painted on color, and a colored figure on metal. The coverings and figures 

 belonging to the helmet also follow this rule ; but the color of purple forms 

 an exception. Other exceptions also are found, e. g. when a figure is 

 intended to retain its natural color; or when the ground of a field may 

 have at the same time both metal and color, and the figure extends over both ; 

 or when the figure is to mark a peculiar branch of an old or extinct family ; 

 or lastly, when the same figure has a portion of itself varying in color 

 from the rest, as in the red tongue of an animal. 



False arms are such as do not follow these rules. They are also called 

 enigmatical, because they contain a proposition to be solved. Thus the 

 arms of the king of Prussia contain a red grifiin, as a metaphor of the duchy 

 of Stettin. 



The figures of a shield are partly mere combinations of tinctures, partly 

 actual images. The former class are termed honor pieces, and consist of 

 crosses, arches, beams, triangles, spars, &c. (two oblique beams united, 

 pi. ^9, fig. 25), few of them having any actual meaning. A shield is called 

 vacant when it bears only tinctured fields of equal size, and without 

 figures {fig. 34). 



In addition to the right-lined and curvilinear division of the tinctures, we 

 find the following shapes of honor pieces ; checker work, battlements, stairs, 

 scales arranged in various ways, swallow-tails, crutches, crosses, &c., &c. 

 A shield is said to be expectant when it contains merely fields or tinctures 

 upon which figures may be inserted, as circumstances may suggest. 

 Vacant shields, which are embellished upon their surfaces with lines, are 

 termed damasked. If two different tinctures meet in a point in the middle 

 of a field, the field is said to be diagonally quartered {fig. 54). If two 

 tinctures change in a square, the field is quartered {fig. 53), and the 

 position may be either straight or oblique ; if straight, the field is checkered 

 {fig. 31), if oblique, the checkering of course is lozenged {fig. 32). Other 

 fields are graded, greaved, netted, and alternated, as the seams of a wall. 

 The trellis or grate is formed of lines crossing each other at either right or 

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