who can suppose it possible that they
should think only of utility in such a question as the disposal of their
tails. It is a common notion among those who have acquired some
smattering of the theory of evolution that fishes developed into
reptiles, reptiles into birds, and birds into beasts; but this is as
wrong as it could be. Whatever the genealogy of the beasts may be, they
certainly were not evolved from birds, and are in many respects not
above them but below them. These are two independent branches of the
tree of living forms, as the Greeks and Romans were branches of the
stock of Japheth. The beasts may stand for the conquering Romans if you
like, but the birds are the Greeks, and have advanced far beyond them in
all emotional and artistic sensibility. They worship in the temple of
music and beauty. And, like ourselves, they have found no subject so
worthy of the highest efforts of art as their own dress. But the
clothing of the body must conform more or less to the figure, and so,
for a field in which invention and fancy may sport untrammelled, a lady
turns to her hat and a bird to its tail. And by both, with equal
heroism, every consideration of mere comfort, convenience, health, or
safety is swept aside in obedience to the higher aim. Is this only a
flippant jocularity, or is there here in very truth some profound law of
the mind revealing itself in spheres seemingly so disconnected?

Look at a peacock. Its train, by the way, is a false tail, like the
chignon of twenty years ago, or the fringe of the present day; the true
tail is under it, and serves no purpose but to support it. Now the
peacock lives on the ground, among scrub and brushwood, haunted by
jackals and wild cats. They, like soldiers in khaki, reconnoitre him in
a uniform expressly designed to elude the eye, but he flaunts a flag
resplendent with green and gold. And when his one chance of life lies in
springing nimbly from the ground and committing himself to his strong
wings, he must lift and carry this ponderous paraphernalia with him. And
the terrible Bonelli's eagle is soaring above. But all is risked proudly
for the sake of the morning hour in the glade where the ladies assemble.
And the peacock is only one of many. Not to mention the lyre bird, the
Argus pheasant, the bird of paradise, and other splendid examples, there
are common dicky-birds which point the moral and adorn the tail as
emphatically.

If the tail is a rudder, where should yo