_Beaver Hat._--Mr. T. Hudson Turner (No. 7. p. 100.) asks,
"What is the earliest known instance of the use of a _beaver
hat_ in England?"
(236}Fairholt (_Costume in England_) says, the earliest notice
of it is in the reign of Elizabeth, and gives the following
quotation from Stubbe's _Anatomy of Abuses,_ 1580:--
"And as the fashions be rare and strange, so is the stuff
whereof their hats be made divers also; for some are
of silk, some of velvet, some of taffetie, some of sarcenet,
some of wool, and, which is more curious, some of a certain
kind of fine haire; these they call _bever hattes_, of
xx, xxx, or xl shillings price, fetched from beyond the seas,
from whence a great sort of other varieties doe come besides."