_Punch_ had already referred to Its disuse on the cricket field. The mention of statues in top-hats is not an effort of imagination: Dr. Grigor, to whom Nairn owes so much of its popularity as a health resort, is thus attired in the stone effigy of him which stands in the centre of the town. The tall hat, though now seldom seen except at weddings and funerals, has survived its centenary; but new fashions in headgear date from 1897, when _Punch's_ "Stifled Stockbroker" rejoices, when the thermometer stood at ninety in the shade, in the relief afforded by his Panama and Pyjamas. The appearance of the Homburg Hat is chronicled in 1900, but not in a complimentary manner. "Bertie's new hat," according to a satirical young lady, "looks as though somebody had begun excavating to find his brains, and had given it up in despair." There was another heat wave this year, and _Punch_ notices that straw hats were worn at Sandown, while the horses in Paris were "wearing straw bonnets to protect them from the heat," a practice adopted in subsequent years in London. The "boom" in sandals in 1901 belongs more to Hygiene than to Fashion, but, if _Punch_ is to be believed, it was not confined to health cranks and children; and in the Sapphic stanza of Canning's "Needy Knife-grinder" he gives voice to the indignant protest of the London shoeblack. Another sartorial centenary, that of trousers, fell in the year 1902, but _Punch's_ appeal to the poets to celebrate it in song remained unanswered. Meanwhile a young peer was credited by a society journal with the intention of forming a League in order to differentiate men's evening dress from that of a waiter, but _Punch_ failed to see in the venture any sign of _noblesse oblige_. By 1902 the Panama Hat had been vulgarized by 'Appy 'Arry; and a year later _Punch_ speaks of "the late Panamania." It had gone out of fashion in New York, being superseded by the ordinary stiff straw hat, and _Punch_ anticipated that the "slump" would also cross the Atlantic. [Illustration: FOND WIFE: "What do you think of Bertie's new hat, dear?" HER CANDID SISTER: "Well, dear, I think it looks as though somebody had begun excavating to find his brains, and had given it up in despair."] [Sidenote: _Novelties v. Revivals_] There is one grand distinction between men and women in regard to dress. Women (or those who dictate their fashions) are divided between novelties and revivals, and the revivals are generally of the most outrageous absurdities. It is otherwise with the simple male. He deals far less in revivals, and when he hits upon a good novelty he generally sticks to it. In this category I would unhesitatingly include the brown boot, to which _Punch_ devoted the following instructive article, modelled on the style of the _Daily Mail_, in the year 1903:-- THE CULT OF THE BROWN BOOT