532 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



magnificence in male attire and the development of feminine 

 finery among civilized races, is more interesting to the zoologist, 

 the anthropologist, or the moral philosopher. 



To the first of these it is a perplexing departure from the 

 scheme of Nature, where it is a rule that any marked difference 

 between the sexes confers greater splendor upon the male. The 

 peacock and peahen, the lion and lioness, the stag and the hind, 

 are common examples of a principle which, among the higher 

 animals, finds its only exception among certain falcons. 



As for our moral philosopher, his opinion does not count for 

 much in matters of dress, or its substitute — tattooing. He proba- 

 bly wears a shocking bad hat, with marks of ancient rain-drops, 

 which, like those on the Corncockle flags in the New Red Sand- 

 stone, having once been allowed to dry, are practically indelible. 

 His umbrella is robust enough to shelter three abreast, but, hon- 

 est man, he had left it in the stand at the British Museum, or his 

 mind was too busy with a complicated train of thought to allow 

 him to put it up at the right moment. His theory of feminine 

 dress finds no favor with the wife of his bosom or his daughters ; 

 they bewilder him by the mutability of their fashions, for no 

 sooner has he found a parallel in dress-improvers to the worship 

 of Venus Callipyge, than lo ! they have melted away, and an un- 

 accountable protuberance appears somewhere else. He prepares 

 unanswerable arguments against the cruelty of adorning hats 

 with feathers and the bodies of little birds, but, before he can pro- 

 duce them, ribbons and flowers are all the mode. 



Perhaps women devote themselves to the details of millinery 

 all the more because we men have allotted to them more than a 

 fair share of the dull things of this life. "We have left them com- 

 paratively little on which they can occupy themselves agreeably. 

 They have books, of course, but books only serve as a whet to 

 active employment. The daily round of household duties, the 

 weekly discharge of bills, the tedious routine of morning calls, 

 visitation of the sick— everything, in short, that bores a man is 

 cast upon his wife ; no wonder if her thoughts attach themselves 

 to matters of toilet, which we despise as being beneath our dig- 

 nity. And thereby we, who are the oppressors, derive unmerited 

 advantage, for we are free to feast our eyes on the pretty things 

 in which the fair sex go pranked. 



Not that our enjoyment is without alloy. Feminine costume 

 is subject to the most sudden and excruciating variations. No 

 sooner have we learned to delight in a simple, becoming fashion, 

 than instantly the Evil One, whose dwelling-place is in Paris, 

 contrives some mock deformity, and every woman of spirit hastens 

 to adopt it. There is nothing in the human frame more pleasing 

 to the eye than the sweet lines of a woman's shoulder ; yet this is 



