Darwin throws the cold light of science on the important subject of feminine attire, when he points out that the gorgeous plumage of certain birds has been developed by them as a special sex attraction to secure for them the notice of a mate. With birds and animals, however, it is almost invariably the male who decks himself out in the most brilliant colouring, hoping thereby to make himself the cynosure of all the eyes of the females; but in the human species, by a curious piece of satire, Nature seems to encourage the female to adopt this gentle art. At any rate the Bulgarian women were adepts at it; and in spite of their Finnish type of features, many of them looked positively pretty as they stooped over the pool in their short, white kirtles of homespun frieze and loose-sleeved scarlet bodices, making a bright note of colour in the picture. And as they dipped their garments in the steaming washtub of Nature's own brewing, these rustic _blanchisseuses de fin_ would sing the plaintive folk-songs of their country in the smooth Slavonian tongue, which had come to them in the old migratory days, during their long residence on the Volga, before the Avars swooped down upon them and drove them across the Danube to the country under the shadow of the Balkans, where they have remained ever since. In the Bulgarian folk-songs, with their plaintive semitones and their melodies sliding away invariably into the mournful minor, one seemed to hear the echoes of the history of the people who have degenerated from the warlike race that crossed the Danube under their great chief Zabergan in the sixth century to the feeble and lethargic tillers of the soil, who have grown up under their long subjection to the great Byzantine Empire with its seat of government at Constantinople, and afterwards to the despotic Turkish power which superseded it. As the evening drew in we would race our horses back across country to Nish, haunted by the recollections of those plaintive Bulgarian airs and of the low, rich voices of the dark-eyed singers. The Turk, though an excellent fellow in many respects, has peculiar notions in the matter of voice production, and to hear a group of them all singing in unison through their noses as they squatted on the ground round a camp-fire was an experience to which one had to get accustomed before one could thoroughly enjoy it. It was a pleasant variety to exchange the nasal tenor squeak of the Turkish Tommy Atkins for the soft contralto of a Bulgarian _blanchisseuse_. One of the principal sights of Nish is a squarely built brick tower covered over with plaster, in which are set three thousand Servian skulls. This ghastly trophy, which is about fifty years old, celebrates a long forgotten victory. The heads were stuck there freshly shorn from the shoulders of the Servians, and the whole grim monument reminds one of those _sámadhs_, or cenotaphs of heads, of which Kipling gives such a vivid description in one of his "Departmental Ditties."