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?” 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 shillin…