POWDER PUFFS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 47, 24 August 1931, Page 11

POWDER PUFFS

EACH A TRAGEDY

Very few people know the story of the down powder puffs which are a good deal used; though, in these days of so many substitutes, they are mercifully fewer than they were. Tho story of them is told by a man who travelled to a little coral island in the Indian Ocean in the course of a "wander" about the world, with no special destination. He was in a trading schooner which dropped anchor almost under the coconut palms, and there waited till the headman came over to talk copra, turtles, and shell, and to hear the news, for tho schooner was his first visitor for over three months. While the talk was going on the visitor sat under an awning full in view of a beautiful island. It was an "oasis" in a sapphire sea, where turtles moved up the white beaches after sunset to lay their eggs close to the undergrowth, and great frigate birds with their red breasts and long pinions wheeled to and fro on the look-out for "booby birds" coming homo from tho day's fishing. The sea was as clear as crystal down to a depth of 40 fathoms, where brilliant-ly-coloured fish with the sheen of enamel on their scales darted or lazed about among many specimens of gorgeous coral.

The visitor wished to view the other side of the island, and with a "boy" as guide traversed a, dense mass of undergrowth to where there was interesting bird life to be observed. They came on thousands and thousands of booby birds, "which," says the writer, "looked for all tho world like brobdinnaginn ornaments from a Christmas tree—just round bundles of fluff with a tiny head and large yellow beak." Questioning the boy, the traveller found that the only use of the birds was for the plucking of down for powder puffs. The writer continues thus in tho story: "He lifted up a fat baby about fourteen inches in height, and passed his hand over the skin, showing me that the dowji was not. very compact.- To make a really good powder puff, ho told me, you must keep the bird for eight days 'without food before you kill it, and then tho down is very compact." The boy was not supposed to kill tho birds, as they can be plucked more thau once. "I always fancy I can see a long-drawn-out tragedy in a genuine down powder puff," concludes the writer.