A Cruel Fashion

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 07, Issue 45, 7 November 1907, Page 9

A Cruel Fashion

In early New England the Puritan leaders regulated female attire by law. They considered long hair unscriptural, preached down wigs and veils, and condemned as inventions of Satan the jewels and farthin-" gales and other feminine frippery with which ungodly, women used to decorate Ihemselves outside New England. The sternly honest and uncompromising Pilgrim Fathers and 1 their early descendants erred, indeed, on the side of severity. But circumstances occasionally arise which' call for the existence of a censorship of fashion as well as for a censorship of plays and books.

We allude in particular to the needless slaughter of egrets, which within the past few weeks has jbfcen talcing place on a 'big' scale along the banks of the Murray, in Australia. Melbourne papers tell a pitiful tale of the wholesale; destruction of those bbautiful and harmless herons for the sake of the plumes which adorn them in the nesting season, and which are sold for theddecorr r ation of the head-gear of ladies who follow the cruel fashion of the -time. And the slaughter of the parent birds causes, in turn, "the slow and agpnising death of tens of thousands of their callow fledgelings. .

Fashion lias been a Bajazet, a Tamerlane, a 'Zenghis Khan— all rolled into one— for the feathered tribe. Happily, the wholesale slaughter of birds for the adornment of feminine hats, bonnets, and toques has somewhat aibated— if we may judge by our observations in New Zealand. The' massacre of the feathe\ed innocents seemed to have reached its height just ten years ago. At Uh'af time tue Congress of American Ornithologists staled that England alone imported about 25,000,000 a year, and Europe abput 300,000,000. Lovely worran and her fashions are responsible for the almost complete extinction of some of the most beautiful and interesting feathered tenants of the world's forests and streams. 'We may smile at fashion ', says a recent writer, l and even admire her, so long as she is not cruel ; hut foeauty gjtows barbarous instead of angelic when it forgets to be kind and womanly '. According to an eye-witness of the slaughter of the egrets, writing in the Melbourne ' Age ',

'It is not possible to conceive of anything more horribly brutal and barbiarous than the methods employed that may enable one of the gentler sex to become the possessor of an " egret plume." Surely no woman worthy of the name can have any idea of the fiendish, cruelty and pitiable suffering that must ensue ere she can become the possessor of such a bauble. Our civilisation is but a veneer, and a thin one at that, or trade in such ghastly relics would not be possible.'

We make merry at Catullus writing a poem to soothe the grief of his pagan ladye-love for the loss of her pet sparrow. But the pagan lassie had at least heart enough to regret the death of her feathered friend. Jn one at least of its aspects, modern fashion has far less feeling.