528 SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL. which to exercise its authority. Sir Gardner Wilkinson mentions that there was a fashion in dogs in ancient Egypt, which changed from time to time. Some breeds were fashionable on account of their extreme ugliness, others for their beauty or size. The favorite dog of a popular princess would set the fashion in dogs for a long time, as it does in more modern days. As favorite dogs were frequently mummied, and placed in the tombs of their owners, we are able to trace several changes of fashion in these creatures. Professor Flower could have drawn some apt illustra- tions from the burdensome head dresses found in ancient tombs. Some of these were not merely burdensome, but hideous, the hair being extended in such a way as to make the head four or five times larger than nature made it. It were well if human beings would be satisfied with self-torment for fashion's sake. On almost any afternoon you may see in Broadway terriers bred so small that a full grown dog does not weigh much more than a large rat. This custom of changing" the natural form and size of animals for fashion's sake is both ancient and wide- spread. The Hottentots twist the horns of their cattle into various fantastic shapes while the horns are young and flexible, and in some parts of Africa the horns of sheep are made to grow in several points by splitting the horn with a knife when it begins to grow. Among ourselves, too, horses tails are still occasionally docked for old fashion's sake, and Professor Flower remarks that the ancient custom of cropping the ears of horses is not yet extinct in England. Among savages the modes of fashionable deformity are more numerous than with civilized people, though they are less injurious. Some tribes color their nails red or black. Tattooing the skin in an almost universal practice. Some savages blacken their teeth ; others pull the mouth
