DECEMBER 227 



as the Highlanders ? This would be esteemed a privi- 

 lege by the former and a compliment by the latter. 

 Objection might be raised on the score of economy 

 because of the cost of the full-dress bonnet draped 

 with ostrich plumes, which, though picturesque, is but 

 a tailor's parody of the bonnet of a duine-uasail with 

 its eagle's feather or blackcock's tail. Let the Lowland 

 regiments be content with the blue bonnets which 

 used to swarm over the border of yore. Nobody who 

 has seen a battalion of the London Scottish marching 

 down Pall Mall and listened to the comments of those 

 whom the skirl of the pipes summon to crowd the club 

 windows will tell you that this splendid corps would 

 gain anything in soldierly appearance by donning 

 feather bonnets. That head-dress was condemned 

 officially in 1882, but in deference to Queen Victoria's 

 wishes it was promptly restored. Its abolition had 

 been hotly challenged in the House of Commons by 

 certain perfervid Scots quorum pars parvafui one 

 of whom volunteered a quaint explanation to another 

 honourable member's doubt about ostrich feathers 

 being appropriate to the equipment of a Scottish 

 Highlander. He gravely assured the House that the 

 decoration had its origin in Sir Ralph Abercromby's 

 Egyptian campaign in 1801, when the Highland 

 soldiers picked up ostrich feathers in the desert and 

 stuck them in their bonnets as protection from the 

 sun ! 



The fact is that the feather bonnet, and all other 

 exaggerated and costly head-gear, should be as reso- 

 lutely relegated to limbo as the hideous masks worn by 



