Fastened on sidewise, head downward, on one was a magnificent scarlet tanager, his body half concealed by folds of tulle, his fixed eye staring into vacancy.

On another was the head and breast of a beautiful yellow-hammer; it was surmounted by the tall sweeping plumes of the egret, which this bird produces only at breeding time.

Oh, how much joy and beauty the world had lost by that cruel deed! A third hat had two song sparrows imprisoned in meshes of star-studded lace.

Their blithesome carol had been rudely silenced, their cheer to the world cut short, simply that they might be used for hat trimming.

Of the remaining ones some were as yet unknown to me, but my mother, who had an extensive acquaintance with foreign birds, said that in that strange murderous mixture of millinery, far-away Australia had furnished the filmy feathers of the lyre bird which swept upward from a knot of ribbons, and that the forests of Germany had contributed the pretty green linnet.