JUDGING from late millinery creations, and the appearance of windows and showcases, women, in spite of the efforts of the Audubon societies, still elect to adorn themselves with the stuffed remains of rare or common birds.

A live bird is a beautiful and graceful object, but a dead duck, pigeon, or gull peering with glassy eyes over the brim of a woman's hat is, to the thinking mind, both unbecoming and repulsive. In deference to "sentimental" bird lovers and at the same time the behest of Dame Fashion, wings and breasts are said to be manufactured out of bits of feathers and quills which have all the appearance of the original. Wings and breasts, yes, but never the entire creature, which the bird lover—in a millinery sense—chooses above all other adornments for her headgear. Apart from the humanitarian side of the subject, one cannot but marvel that such women cannot be brought to regard the matter from the esthetic point of view.

"Esthetic," repeats my lady, glancing admiringly in the mirror at the death's head above her brow, "esthetic point of view, indeed! Why, the point of view with most women is to wear whatever they consider becoming, striking, or outrÉ. Now I flatter myself in selecting this large gull with spreading wings for my hat, that I attained all three of these effects, don't you?"

"Especially the outrÉ," muttered one of her listeners, at which my lady laughed, evidently well pleased.

Five women out of every ten who walk the streets of Chicago and other Illinois cities, says a prominent journal, by wearing dead birds upon their hats proclaim themselves as lawbreakers. For the first time in the history of Illinois laws it has been made an offense punishable by fine and imprisonment, or both, to have in possession any dead, harmless bird except game birds, which may be "possessed in their proper season." The wearing of a tern, or a gull, a woodpecker, or a jay is an offense against the law's majesty, and any policeman with a mind rigidly bent upon enforcing the law could round up, without a written warrant, a wagon load of the offenders any hour in the day, and carry them off to the lockup. What moral suasion cannot do, a crusade of this sort undoubtedly would.

Thanks to the personal influence of the Princess of Wales, the osprey plume, so long a feature of the uniforms of a number of the cavalry regiments of the British army, has been abolished. After Dec. 31, 1899, the osprey plume, by order of Field Marshal Lord Wolseley, is to be replaced by one of ostrich feathers. It was the wearing of these plumes by the officers of all the hussar and rifle regiments, as well as of the Royal Horse Artillery, which so sadly interfered with the crusade inaugurated by the Princess against the use of osprey plumes. The fact that these plumes, to be of any marketable value, have to be torn from the living bird during the nesting season induced the Queen, the Princess of Wales, and other ladies of the royal family to set their faces against the use of both the osprey plume and the aigrette as articles of fashionable wear.

If this can be done in the interest of the white heron and osprey, on the other side of the water, why cannot the autocrats of style in this country pronounce against the barbarous practice of bird adornment entirely, by steadfastly refusing to wear them themselves? The tireless energy of all societies for the protection of birds will not begin to do the cause among the masses so much good as would the total abandonment of them for millinery purposes by what is termed society's 400.

Description of Plate.—A, flowering branch; 1, bracts, enlarged; 2, flowering bud; 3, flower; 4 and 5, petal with ligula; 6, pistil with stamens; 7, stamen; 8, pistil; 9, ovary, transverse section; 10 and 11, corolla; 12 and 13, fruit.