FASHION AND EVOLUTION.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1028, 18 January 1911, Page 9

FASHION AND EVOLUTION.

A LETTER AND A THEOBT. [For The Dominion.] What is 1 Fashiont asks a .country teacher. .Is* it tho step in cvolupoii. 1... have hitherto regarded it as merely an external circumstance signifying nothing, not even .the mood of thq. hour. But tlie tales toM in the sliearui" shells of sheep that chew off the tails ?J ~"ftspriiiif have made .mo wonder it this is not an instance of tho maternal Solicitude, making permanently for eleganco and distinction-in the type . Of course, the habit is at present a peculiarity of tho. minority, but it will soon spread through the flock (us is the way of fashion), and then the labours of the,sheep-breeder will be lightened, tint the story, has a. wider significance. Setting aside the light which .it. throws oir the-halting lives of "Bopeep"—evidently no nursery, rhyino at. all, but a dimlyremembered. epic poem—mav it not illumine another great mystery? .Ultimately will not tho tumbling' be tnil-lecs permanently?;,. And will not tailjess sheen become tho type? . ---- Then, proceeding,from the proven to the uuproven,' have wo not hero' tho Darwinian theory without a hitch, especially when we. remember that the desiro.for distinction, which is at the Toot of the fitting, of all fashion, governs quite as . blindly the mother who' wears wool as the one; whirgrows it. Of course, the motive of the iirst is - not so obvious-as that; of the'woolly parent. The latter is evidently distressed .by "the difference between herself and her be-tailbd baby. That .is easily seen. . But in. those great battles of the pre-historic-tribe's, may not the victors have, adopted the tails of : the vanquished as .the Indian tribes to-day carry scalps? Then the inference is plain. Obviously the ladies of the beaten tribe, with that instinct., for -the oxcellent that wo .call "natural taste," ■ recognised that this badge of : 'servitude really made for • ease and elegance. Henco the setting of "tho ]jew fashion, : and' we. havo the puzzle of centuries, no enigma at all, but a natural and .inevitable' result of tho prevailing mode:, . ' ■ • In. this case, tho decrying of fashion by men of science who wear themselves to the bone in tho, search for First Onusesivi's..-pointedly ono of life's little ironies.:':