Year: 1877

aQ0A&AN&@A0AA-~- clothes. Fashion in dress is not all mat ter of.blind 0hance or contriYapce of. the tailors and modistes. We ought t0 search in our apparel for tho survival of certain rudimentary traits. The process of elim- ination is constantly going on in dress as we'll as animals and plants. It is not al- ways the Attest that survives, and it is on. ly by careful study that we can under stand the historical genesis of our articles of apparel. Yet everything has historical meaning, however, useless 1t may seem now. Let us take some illustrative ex- amples. 45

 There are the long, trailing skirts, . which sweep the ground. They are use- less appendages now and meaningless, but they have an historical significance. They are not needed to sweep the streets. for the corporation hires men to do that. Nor do they usually attempt it; most ladies carry their trains on one arm, or hold them in their left hand. Every woman you ses and it has been SO for nearly a year. carries her left arm down at her side, with the hand turned in peculiar curve; and it is he.fashion, the graceful fashion, to hold the hand there whether the dress in long or short. When the train is cut Off, as it will be at the next turn of fashion, women will probably continue to hold the left arm in that position; and then the evolutionist will wonder why they do it, perhaps forgetting that the action is . survival of the tram. But the train itself is Tn our society a survival of something. We can trace it back some centuries to the medieval courts: where the long train, borne by pages, was necessary part ofNn pageant. and when it was useful to cover the latter part of the dainty palfrey which the lady rode. But thls does not explain the train. It is survival of something. We think we are not in error in tracing it 1 to the Garden. It is a rudimentary sug. gestion of our parents. In its use by wO- man there survives the graceful, sinuous motion of the serpent. This motion ap; pears now and then in lovely woman with | out reference to her dress. George Eliot | noticed it in Gwendolen. It is Q gliding, | insinuating, distracting physical motion. and it is both typifed and initiated in the | flowing train. Few women can glide we'll, | and it is a feminine instinct to glide. Hence the train; which is undoubtedly Q l survival of the serpent in the Garden. It is the kind of dellcate reminiscense of Q sin, repented of, which French woman delights in.

 Then, there are buttons. They are still more mysterious Everybody knows, and almost everybody by sharp experience, that woman is made up and held togeth- CT with pins-the fight of tribe of Am azons is always traced in war by the hair pins. Buttons are never used to button anything; if employed at all, they are sew ed on simply as rudimentary traits of some former habit; only naturalists can tell l what. And just now women have blos- | somed out all over with buttons. They are sewed on in rows, laid on in diamonds | and squares, often overlapping each other in confusing manner. They appear to | be buttons, but upon close inspection they turn out not not to be buttons at all, performing none of the alice of buttons, having no eyes, and no button-holes to l match. They arc plainly a survival of something, but of what9 Did women. in l some pre-histOrical time, before there l were any thorn-trees. use buttons? ? Or IS this present rash of buttons only a sort of revolutionary assertion of woman's | rights to wear the objects which distin- guish man from the brute creation? And is it, like most revolutions, overdone and made ridiculous9 We hope that Mir. Dar- win will turn his attention to this subject and inform us what feminine buttons are | a survival of

 But certain buttons of the male sex are

 

 | is the significance of the two surviving buttons on the dress coat, set in the small of mans back. with no button-holes in sight? They cannot, in the evolution theory, be accidental; they are survivals of some use. Were they part of military or hunting costume, used to button on Q sword strap? Was the skirt of the coat once attached by them to the body? Did they once form a rev around the waist ? How does it happeh that two are left, when one would just as we'll keep in mem ory the rudimentary trait? These are | questions of historical interest. There iB l a sect of Shakers in Ohio who are develop. ed beyond the button stage; the men use hooks and eyes on their straight frontOd coats. We should like to know if in the spot behind where on the male form two buttons usually grow, these evolved Shak. CTS put hook and an eye. It would be very interesting fact in evolution.

 There is no. difficulty about gloves. The heavy gauntlet is a survival of the cesstts, for Knocking people down without hurt. ing your knuckles; fur gloves are the sur vivals of the time when we were all hairy animals; and the modern gloves of society were worn as a protection, when people were afraid to catch something if they shook hands with their fellows. In circles of the highest fashion and civilization now gloves are discarded, except for street wear. The pointed, pen.shaped skirt of the dress coat has puzzled good many in- vestigators. Since there is little warmth in it, and no beauty, many have wondered what 1t Is for. The answer is, that it is not for anything now, but it is survival of habit, Some philosophers who know what relation the 0S coccVQis in man bears to the retained tail of the deserted monkey, have supposed that the ''swallow tail' is survival of the real tail of pre- historic man. The observation is ineen. ious but superficial If it were survival of that, it would be more rudimentary, more like the tail of the Shaughair or the bob-tail of the militia. mans iacket--s which is in itself mystery. No, we are convinced that the tall of the dress.ccat had another origin. and that it indicates a very important historical fact. There was time, before evolution got well O. going, when every body had tail It was the fashionable thing to have a tall, and to wear it on the outside, and Go have it painted in the national colors. Ik answer. ed the purpose of the ancient .cockade (which, it will be remembered, our pres- ent excellent, but revolutionary. Govefnor Hubbard evolved out of existence) in par. tY warfare. By and by, in the develop ment of man, the tail began to disappear slowly, of course, and with here and there an individual of the species. It was not worn away, as some philosophers have absurdly claimed. by sitting on 1t, but it was cultivated out by process of natural selection-hrst in one individual, then in two, and four, and SO on. In c city Uf eight thousand people there twoald mot he more than one absolutely tail-less and perhaps three with half tails, and nine with three-quarter tails, and Q score with seven-eights. But of course the tail was still fashionable, and the man who had none would be conspicuous. and exceed ingly mortified. He couldn't go into so- ciety. We know from the record what happened; the old Silurian is full of the evidence of it. Whan ha wna invirarI tn d