Abstract
Hawaiian Feather Cape. In Man for January Mr. H. G. Beasley figures in colour and describes a feather-cape from Hawaii, which he acquired for the Cranmore Ethnographical Museum, Chislehurst, in 1932. The cape measures 62 in. round the base and is 25 in. in depth, thus falling into the intermediate series, in which the base-line measurement is that of a full-sized cloak, but the shallow depth that of a cape. The ground-work is of red Iiwi feathers (Vestiaria coccinea) and the pattern and border are of yellow Oo (Acrulocercus nobilis). The main body of the foundation is somewhat coarse; but the six-inch border is of finer meshed work. The cloak belonged to Sir Joseph Banks and was given by him to his private secretary, Mr. R. K. S. Durham, from whose grandson it was obtained by Mr. Beasley. It is to be presumed that Banks obtained the cloak from one of the officers who sailed with Cook in his later voyages; but the connexion with any one of Cook's voyages cannot be established. In a supplementary note Mr. H. J. Braunholtz adds that the birds from which the feathers were taken were captured alive and often released after they had been plucked. The popular belief that the Oo bird had only two yellow feathers is erroneous: actually the yellow feathers form axilliary tufts containing 15–20 feathers. The feathers are attached to a net of fibre, each separately, by a finer thread of the same material. The use of cotton thread is a sign of modernity. The British Museum now has twenty six of these feather capes or cloaks, presumably the largest collection in existence. They were first described by Capt. King in his account of Cook's third voyage when the Hawaiian group was discovered in January 1778.
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Research Items. Nature 131, 171–173 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131171a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131171a0