o-day, when every man, save a football player or some eccentric reformer or religious fanatic, displays in youth a close-cropped head, and when even hoary age is seldom graced with flowing, silvery locks, when women’s hair is dressed in simplicity, we can scarcely realize the important and formal part the hair played in the dress of the eighteenth century. In the great eagerness shown from earliest colonial days to acquire and reproduce in the New World every change of mode in the Old, to purchase rich dress, and to assume novel dress, no article was sought for more speedily and more anxiously than the wig. It has proved an interesting study to compare the introduction of wigs in England with the wear of the same form of head-gear in America. Wigs were not in general use in England when Plymouth and Boston were settled; though in Elizabeth’s day a “peryuke” had been bought for the court fool. They were not in universal wear till the close of the seventeenth century. The “Wig Mania” arose in France in the reign of Louis XV. In 1656 the king had forty court perruquiers, who were termed and deemed artists, and had their academy. The wigs they produced were superb. It is told that one cost £;200, a sum equal in purchasing power to-day to $5000. The French statesman and financier, Colbert, aghast at the vast sums spent for foreign hair, endeavored to introduce a sort of cap to supplant the wig, but fashions are not made that way. Governor and Reverend Gurdon Saltonstall. Governor and Reverend Gurdon Saltonstall. For information of English manners and customs in that day, I turn (and never in vain) to those fascinating volumes, the _Verney Memoirs_. From them I learn this of early wig-wearing by Englishmen; that Sir Ralph Verney, though in straitened circumstances during his enforced residence abroad, felt himself compelled to follow the French mode, which at that period, 1646, had not reached England. That exemplary gentleman paid twelve livres for a wig, when he was sadly short of money for household necessaries. It was an elaborate wig, curled in great rings, with two locks tied with black ribbon, and made without any parting at the back. This wig was powdered. Sir Ralph wrote to his wife that a good hair-powder was very difficult to get and costly, even in France. It was an appreciable addition to the weight of the wig and to the expense, large quantities being used, sometimes as much as two pounds at a time. It added not only to the expense, but to the discomfort, inconvenience, and untidiness of wig-wearing. Pomatum made of fat, and that sometimes rancid, was used to make the powder stick; and noxious substances were introduced into the powder, as a certain kind is mentioned which must not be used alone, for it would produce headache.