"Fine Feathers Make Fine Birds"

It is no longer the question of “Who killed Cock Robin?” that “most foul and unusual” assassination which so perturbed our youthful minds, but “Who is killing all the beautiful blue breasts, and green breasts, and purple breasts, and gold breasts. Add the gorgeously-feathered songsters of groves in every clime?” The sad, sad, answer is, “Woman.” Yes, woman, lovely woman, it is at whose door lies the destruction of millions of beautiful birds, in order that her hat, her coat, her cuffs, may be adorned with the gloriously-colored plumage. A melancholy sight it is to behold a charming representative of the female sex divine promenading in a hat upon which is perched some exquisite specimen of ornithology, which, thanks to the skill of the hunter and taxidermist, looks as though it were yet alive and reveling in its native grove. The great car of Juggernaut, Fashion, rolls over the hapless birds, and women, who would swoon at the fall of a sparrow into the claws of the harmless necessary cat, unthinkingly issue the fiat that dooms to destruction thousands upon thousands of beauteously feathered choristers.

Reprinted from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, November 10, 1883.

New York, New York, 1887 - The horrible curiosity just imported form Italy by a prominent New York surgeon.

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A well-known New York surgeon has just imported form Florence, Italy, a table which for originality in the matter of construction and ghastliness in conception, is probably without rival. It was mad y Giuseppe Sagatti, who passed several years of his life in the manufacture. To the casual observer it gives the impression of a curious mosaic of marbles of different shades and colors, for it looks like a polished stone. In reality it is composed of human muscles and viscera. No less than a hundred bodies were requisitioned for the material. The table is round and about a yard in diameter, with a pedestal ad four claw feet, the whole being formed of petrified human remains. The ornaments of the pedestal are made from the intestines, the claws with hearts, livers and lungs, the natural color of which is preserved. The table top is constructed of muscles artistically arranged, and it is bordered with upward of a hundred eyes, the effect of which is said to be highly artistic, since they retain all their luster and seem to follow the observer. Sagetti died about fifty years ago. He obtained his bodies from the hospitals and indurated them by impregnation with mineral salts.

From The National Police Gazette, October 1, 1887