M. Edouard Fournier, in his most interesting _Histoire des Enseignes de Paris_, makes some valuable remarks on the connection between Trade Signs and Heraldry. The following is a translation. After stating that coats of arms came into use at the time of the Crusades, he says: “The first Crusade dates from the year 1090.... Is it not allowable to suppose that, among the Crusaders who had taken the sign of the cross upon their coats [of arms], there were some who, prevented from starting upon the Crusade, displayed the cross upon their houses, as a token of their having taken a vow, sooner or later, to proceed to the Holy Land? This would be a rational explanation of the general and widely followed custom of using the cross as the sign of a house or a shop--Red Crosses, White Crosses, Golden and Silver Crosses, &c., which form a kind of sign-board crusade. It is impossible otherwise to explain the singular and obvious analogy which exists between the devices on the shield of arms and those on the oldest sign-boards. On the sign-boards, as upon the armorial bearings, are to be seen the same devices, borrowed from every object which has a shape or a name in the creation of God or of man; moreover, upon the sign-boards, these figures are reproduced with the various colours and ‘metals’ in which they appear on the coats of arms. The only difference is in the ‘field’ or background upon which the figures are painted. On the sign-board this is of no importance; while it is, on the contrary, one of the distinctive features of the coat of arms. In Louvan Geliot’s _Indice Armorial_ (_Armorial Index_) is to be found not only a glossary of all the words used in heraldic ‘blazon,’ but also the names of nearly all the devices displayed upon sign-boards.... In a word, sign-boards and shields of arms, both alike, display figures of everything that strikes the eye or the mind in our every-day life.... “The mansions built or inhabited by noble families bore, as signs, the arms of these families, sculptured or painted, over the entrance-door. These escutcheons of the nobility, without doubt, excited the envy of the merchants, who wished also to have signs, and who, therefore, placed their trade or occupation under the protection of the shield of France, or some other shield, either of a province or even of a monastery. There was nobody to object to this, and such signs quickly multiplied in every direction.” M. Fournier next gives a long list of houses which formerly displayed armorial signs in several of the “Quartiers” of Paris. “After this enumeration [he says] it will be possible to form an idea of the multitude of signs of this kind which must have existed at the same periods in the other Quarters of Paris.”