Fig. 443.—Arms of Duke of Calabria.
Fig. 444.—Eagle of Tyrol.
positions "displayed" (Fig. 451) and "close" (Fig. 446), very little if any agreement at all exists amongst authorities either as to the terms to be employed or as to the position intended for the wings when a given term is used in a blazon. Practically every other single position is simply blazoned "rising," this term being employed without any additional distinctive terms of variation in official blazons and emblazonments. Nor can one obtain any certain information from a reference to the real eagle, for the result of careful observation would seem to show that in the first stroke of the wings, when rising from the ground, the wings pass through every position from the wide outstretched form, which I term "rising with wings elevated and displayed" (Fig. 450), to a position practically "close." As a consequence, therefore, no one form can be said to be more correct than any other, either from the point of view of nature or from the point of view of ancient precedent. This state of affairs is eminently unsatisfactory, because in these days of necessary differentiation no heraldic artist of any appreciable knowledge or ability has claimed the liberty (which certainly has not been officially conceded) to depict an eagle rising with wings elevated and displayed, when it has been granted with the wings in the position addorsed and inverted. Such a liberty when the wings happen to be charged, as they so frequently are in modern English crests, must clearly be an impossibility.
