Some writers, however, maintain that these monstrosities are not so much the result of ignorance of the real forms of the beasts as that they were intended to typify certain extraordinary qualities, and therefore exaggeration of the natural shapes and functions was needful to express such qualities. This may be true in some instances. Under this idea the noble form of the lion may have been distorted to resemble the wild cat in the fury of its contortions. _The Panther incensed_, breathing fire and smoke out of its mouth, nose and ears, seems as if taken from some misleading history--like that of the boar, by Xenophon, already referred to--or the result of the erroneous description of some terrified traveller. This is a natural and probable mode of accounting for its unnatural appearance. It may, however, fairly be said that the natural ferocity of the brute, and also its destructive qualities, are most fitly typified by the devouring flame issuing from the head of this bloodthirsty and treacherous beast of prey.
_The Heraldic Pelican_, again, is evidently a mistake of the early artists, similar to the heraldic tiger, heraldic antelope, &c., and the persistent following of the traditional "pattern" by the heralds when once established. Early Christian painters always represented this emblem of devoted self-sacrifice, _A Pelican in her piety_--that is, feeding her young with her own blood--as having the head and beak of an eagle or bird of prey such as they must have believed it to possess, and with which it would be possible that it could lacerate its own breast; and not with the clumsy and ungainly "bill" peculiar to this species of bird, which we know is more suited to gobble up small reptiles than to "_vulning_" itself.
Some symbols, again, are neither real nor do they pretend to be fabulous, such as the _two-headed eagle_, but are pure heraldic inventions that have each their special signification. _The tricorporate lion_ lays no claim to be other than the symbol of a powerful triune body under one guiding head; the _three legs conjoined_--the arms of the Isle of Man--is an old Greek sign for expedition. Many other instances will, no doubt, occur to the reader of similar emblems of this class.