THE ENGLISH PRESS ON FEATHER MILLINERY. 



Women and their Victims. — It was 

 hoped some time ago that the fashion of 

 wearing the dead bodies as trimmings for 

 bonnets and hats was going out. Such a 

 hope, apparently, is doomed to disappoint- 

 ment. Perhaps the day may come when 

 people who have a little regard for such 

 helpless creatures as birds will give them 

 up to their fate. It really seems of no use 

 to try to protect them. The loafer from 

 the East End of London goes forth with his 

 cages and his lime, and catches them. He, 

 however, mostly retains the male. The 

 other bird murderer also goes forth on his 

 cruel errand, and, by preference, catches^ 

 and retains the female. * * What matters 

 it to him that his victim is often the mother 

 of a nest full of helpless young, and that 

 they are left in the nest to die of starva- 

 tion; to die while piteously crying out hour 

 after hour for the mother that never comes ? 

 The mother birds are killed, and the young 

 left to die of starvation, because certain 

 women insist that it shall be so. Yet how 

 gentle, and sympathetic, and tender those 

 very women can pretend to be, when it suits 

 their convenience. How correct and nice 

 is their taste in everything that relates to 

 good manners. How shocked they are by 

 vulgarity; how horrified by coarseness. If 

 they could see themselves exactly as some 

 men see them; could have it once driven in 

 upon their consciences, that, in the estima- 

 tion of all rational and right-feeling men, 

 they are incomparably inferior to many 

 costermongers, crossing-sweepers, and un- 

 taught African negroes, they might for one 

 moment pause and reflect upon their worth- 

 lessness. Is it really, then, come to this : 

 That a nineteenth century woman is so 

 utterly selfish, so hopelessly without brains 

 or feeling, and so incapable of learning 

 even the very elements of humanity, that 

 she must and will have birds to adorn her- 

 self with at whatever cost? At bottom it 

 really is want of intellect. The idle modern 

 woman is so self-indulgent, pampered and 

 spoilt, that she can no longer be counted 

 upon to exercise a reasoning faculty. Im- 

 pulses, whims and poutings alternate with 

 fits of sulkiness or rage; and so she spends 

 her life. The movement in favor of the 

 emancipation of women, it may be hoped. 



will not only give enlargement, but a sense 

 of responsibility and duty. No man can 

 contemplate without the deepest anxiety 

 the gradually increasing mental weakness 

 among the prosperous. If the stern necessi- 

 ties of the poorer class of ladies develop in 

 them true strength of mind and sternness 

 of moral fibre,mostpeople will think poverty 

 and necessity blessings, though in disguise. 

 Hardly any price is too great to pay for 

 brains and a moral faculty. — The Hospital. 



Ribbons and flowers are nearly the only 

 trimming on hats and bonnets, according 

 to our latest fashion books. It is pleasing 

 to notice that few — in fact, scarcely any — 

 birds are shown in them. Those ladies who 

 keep up to fashion will therefore not have 

 to wear birds and wings. In the hats and 

 bonnets given in the following publications 

 there is scarcely a bird to be seen : The 

 Queen, Woman s World, Sylvia's Journal, 

 Girls' Own Paper, Myra's Journal, Mrs. 

 Weldons Journal. — Ne^vcastle Chronicle. 



It is only fair to ladies to state that ac- 

 cording to an observation at the West End, 

 the wearing of bird skins is this winter al- 

 most entirely confined to shop girls and to 

 servant maids, and from the tattered ap- 

 pearance of the skins it is obvious that they 

 are only the "remnants" of the milliners' 

 old stock, or the cast-off finery of mis- 

 tresses. This spread of the fashion to the 

 lower grades of society ought to surprise 

 no one, and we have already anticipated its 

 occurrence. Ladies should destroy their 

 bird skins and not give them to their ser- 

 vants, or allow them to be sold to old 

 clothes' collectors, who, of course, immed- 

 iately put them in the market again — not, 

 however, until they may have passed through 

 an East End fever den, or become infested 

 with parasites. The pity of it is that ladies 

 introduced the fashion and we hope they 

 are now beginning to see the cruelty and 

 bad taste they have themselves been guilty 

 of, and have caused in others, and feel 

 thoroughly ashamed of themselves for 

 allowing mere fashion to overcome their 

 strongest instinct, which is for the preserva- 

 tion of life in every form. — Selbourne Maga- 

 zitte. 



