his own distinctive head-badge. We cannot call them hats for such a term is scarcely synonymous with serpents, horns, vultures, waving plumes, and fantastic, upstanding, brimless headgear. Thus we sce that the earliest hat of history was a symbol of power—unrelated to usefulness.
Fevtixe 1s 'ENTED.
Passing over Arabia to the cradle of the race—the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates—we find not only the same evidence of headdress as symbolic of authority, but also the first origins of protective hats. We ought rather to say caps, for the resemblance to the latter is greater. As early as 45 centuries ago the Chaldean warriors used the skull and headskin of an animal as a helmet. From this they rapidly evolved everyday hats, most of which clung for centuries to the helmet type, pointed on top, as the headgear of the Persians in Darius's time would show. Nevertheless there is enough evidence on vases, seals and the like, where hats with brims—more or less stiff—are de-pieted, to point to the origin of the felting process many ages ago somewhere in western Asia.
Esrer tae Hat Bane.
In classic Greece the usual custom—for both men and women—was to go bareheaded. Both hats and caps were well known, but seem to have been reserved largely for protection against sun or rain.
Where hats! appear in ancient pictures they are often as not slung by a cord over the shoulder—an insurance rather than an adornment. They look very much like a cross between a tam-o-shanter and " Chinese policeman's helmet, if such a hybrid comparison is fair to the memory of Greece. Some say it was in this country that the hat band had its origin in the fillet which the Greek girls laced through the crown and tied around their Psyche knot.
Rank indicated by headdress was still evidenced in early Roman days, for in the ritual of giving freedom to a slave—who always went bareheaded—a hat of conical shape was presented to him. Asa rule the Romans wore hats very little, gradually adopting the custom from their neighbours whom they conquered. But when they did wear: them they indulged their delight for colour. The variegated hatbands of our present school and college boys are as nothing compared to the hats with contrasting borders worn even by sedate Roman senators.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.