4 
Osprey ; or , 
When the travellers parted at their journey’s end, 
she who wore that graceful decoration—graceful and 
pleasant to see to those who do not know how it is 
obtained—declared that as soon as she reached her 
home she would remove it from her bonnet, and 
never wear, nor permit her daughters to wear, such 
ornament again. 
Judging from the numbers of aigrettes seen at the 
present time, it appears probable that there are very 
many among us who are as little acquainted with the 
ugly truth of the matter as was the lady in the 
railway carriage. At all events, one does not like to 
believe that any humane person, after learning the 
facts, could exhibit this kind of decoration with a light 
heart. Ladies have repeatedly assured me in all 
seriousness that milliners make these fine plumes out 
of the commonest white feathers. Others believe that 
they are the feathers of an Indian or some exotic 
bird called osprey, which is only another name for 
the ossifrage or sea-eagle. How the egret’s delicate 
ornamental plumes first came to be called osprey in 
the trade I am unable to guess, unless it be because 
when arranged in an aigrette they form a spray. 
Aigrette is French for egret, a kind of heron: 
aigrette, an ornament, originally meant simply a tuft 
of loose drooping plumes like the heron’s crest. The 
word has somewhat changed its meaning with us : the 
aigrette worn by ladies in our day is in very nearly all 
casesactually made of the slender decomposed feathers 
