Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1879 — Sacrifices to Fashion. [ARTICLE]

Sacrifices to Fashion.

The other day I came upon a new store in the city. The windows were fairly dazzling with color. A stray sunbeam falling upon them, the shop front flashed back a rainbow of blue and green, and red and yellow, indigo and vermilion, umber, and black and white. I paused to gaze. It was a store devoted to the modern fashion of adorning ladies’ hats, bonnets, and drepes“ %ith “birds an# “butterflies. All the corners of the earth hail been ransacked to satisfy this nojv craze. Whole birds, birds’ wings, tails, breasts, were here fey the thousand. Butterflies and humming-birds vied with

each other in wealth of color and beauty of arrangement It is true there are lots o! stores in London dovoted, to specimens of “ natural history,” where these things may be purchased; but here is a shop full of them, not as studies or specimens, but as articles of adornment. Travelers and others tell me that bird-slaughter, as .» trade, has now reached proportions which threaten the very extinguishment of some of the rarest, as well as the gayest, species. One can understand this when it is stated on authority that a German dealer in this city recently received a consignment 01-82, 000 dead humming-birds, 80,000 aquatia birds of several varieties, and 800,000 pairs of wings. This is one dealer alone; while at tho same time all the other traders are increasing their orders to foreign shippers. There is something very sad in these figures. Surely, our women cannot think about the subject, or they would never promote this sacrifice of bird-life for a mere freak of fashion. The rage'for feather trimmings has almost annihilated the ribbon trade of Coventry. Men, women and children in that once busy city are starving becauso fashion has introduced a new style of ornament. So that to pleaso the latest whim, birds must die and children must starve. You may stand “on the bridge at Coventry” now, and see scores of people loitering there who, but for the supersedure of ribbons by feathers would be busily at work in the locked-up mills. —London Letter. “ La Surprise” is the name of anew hat with three-quarters of a yard of feathers hanging from the right side. It is so called from the surprised manner in which the husband exclaims “ La!” when presented with the bill. — Norristown Herald.