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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Rt/iiu, was used at the ancient tea ceremony 

 for handing little cakes. The agi is now 

 frequently made useful by being covered 

 with engraved maps of the different prov- 

 inces. Sometimes a fan case holds a dagger. 

 Preachers make points in their speeches by 

 sharply opening or shutting their white fans. 

 Album fans, on which poems are written, 

 are a curious feature in the life of Japan. 

 Many old legends are told again by the ar- 

 rangements of houses, flowers, figures, and 

 birds painted on the faces of fans. An end- 

 less etiquette is involved in the use of fans. 

 With the Japanese, in fact, the fan is an 

 emblem of life. The rivet end is regarded 

 as the starting point, and as the rays of the 

 fan expand, so the road of life widens out 

 toward a prosperous future. The agi is said 

 to have originally taken its shape from the 

 remarkable mountain Fusiyama, which repre- 

 sents to the Japanese all that is beautiful, 

 high, and holy. 



Artificial Birds for Women's Hats. Ac- 

 cording to a writer in the London Spectator, a 

 change has come over the minds of women in 

 respect to feathers ; and while these pretty 

 ornaments continue to be worn, the objections 

 to the wanton sacrifice of birds in order to 

 procure them have so far prevailed that sub- 

 stitutes have been found for those kinds to 

 obtain which birds were killed. While the 

 egret plume the finest of these feathers is 

 still unapproachable as an ornament, the mil- 

 liners say that ladies object to buying the 

 real article, " because it is cruel," and de- 

 mand artificial substitutes, or are contented 

 with less perfect plumes, and sham "os- 

 preys," as they are called, are made in ways 

 it is difficult to determine. Some are fash- 

 ioned from split quill feathers of a larger 

 heron. In others even a microscope fails to 

 show the process of manufacture. Besides 

 substitutes for the "osprey," "all kinds of 

 composite feather decoration, perfect for the 

 purposes to which it is applied, are now 

 used for hats and bonnets, and a naturalist 

 in a milliner's shop finds himself confronted 

 with a hundred varieties of plumage never 

 seen in Nature, but excellent in art, for which 

 it would puzzle any one but the plumassier 

 or the taxidermist to find a name. The era 

 of stuffed birds and natural wings adornin 

 headdresses is almost over. Not long ago, 



for instance, terns were a favorite orna- 

 ment. The whole bird was used. Large 

 hats were fashionable, and two or three of 

 the ' sea swallows' were grouped on a single 

 head. . . . Now the milliners have discov- 

 ered a substitute with which no lover of 

 birds can quarrel, and which reflects no little 

 credit on their craft. Poultry feathers, in 

 some cases of natural colors, but more often 

 dyed to tints suited to the material with 

 which they are worn, are made up into 

 plumes, wings, coronets, and pompons, with 

 a grace and variety of outline which harmon- 

 ize with the modeling of the human head far 

 better than the natural bird forms. Wings 

 of domestic pigeons, often mottled with ex- 

 quisite shades of gray or roan, are still used ; 

 but as the pigeons themselves are destined 

 for food, no one can quarrel with the dispo- 

 sition made of their plumage. The greater 

 part of modern head gear, however, is deco- 

 rated with dyed cock feathers, or ' coque ' 

 feathers pronounced to rhyme with ' oak ' 

 as the milliners prefer to call them. The use 

 of the cock's feathers has been a gradual de- 

 delopment. In John Leech's day they were 

 suggested by the plumes worn by the Sardin- 

 ian troops in the Crimean War, and were worn 

 in ladies' felt hats, somewhat of the ' field 

 marshal's ' pattern. These were only the 

 dark-green tail feathers. But the piles of 

 ' Mercury wings ' of all colors plain or 

 decorated with tinsel or jet which filled the 

 milliners' shops last summer, and which still 

 hold their own, are an immense advance on the 

 cock-feather plumes. Some of these wings 

 are so well made that, except for want of 

 proportion between the primary and second- 

 ary feathers, even a naturalist's eye might be 

 deceived. Kegarded purely as an ornament, 

 they are preferable to the natural arrange- 

 ment, for their construction admits of endless 

 adaptation." Women's fondness for feath- 

 ers may be credited with being the means of 

 preserving one and that the largest species of 

 living bird from extinction, for it has offered 

 the inducement for which ostrich farms have 

 been established and are maintained. 



The Australian Diprotodon. Interest 

 was excited in the recent meeting of the 

 Australasian Association by an account, by 

 C. W. de Yis, of the diprotodon, fossil bones 

 of which have been found in Lake Mulligan, 



