Africa, which in that age, as in the present, was infested with wild beasts. He excelled in hunting; and having in one morning killed three lions, he carried home their heads in a large basket, and presented it to his wife Panthea, then pregnant with her first child. Unconscious of what the basket contained, she raised the lid, and, filled with horror and astonishment by the apparition of the heads, she struck her hand against her left side, exclaiming, in the suddenness of her surprise, “O Hercules! what is this?” By a wonderful sympathy, the likeness of the three heads, grim and horrible as they appeared in the basket, was impressed on the left side of the infant, who afterwards became a famous warrior, and transferred to his shield the badge which nature had thus bestowed upon him. The external ornaments of the bearings remained unaltered until the days of Astorimon, who, after his victory over Ethus, changed the myrtle branch of the lady for one of palm, and the original motto for Eὐνοεῖτω, εὐλόγε, καὶ εὐπράττε--Mean, speak, and do well. Both the shield and the supporters underwent yet another change in the reign of Solvatious of Scotland, who, in admiration of an exploit achieved by the Urquhart and his two brothers in the great Caledonian forest, converted the lions’ heads into the heads of bears, and the armed Javanites of Esormon into a brace of greyhounds. And such were the arms of the family in the days of Sir Thomas, as shown by the curious stone lintel now at Kinbeakie.