During the process which we have described the safety-pin has become stronger and larger, until in the last stage it has grown almost out of recognition.
Fig. 100.—The safety-pin grown larger and used for fastening on a hat.
Straight pins have developed along the same two lines, and we have the strictly useful pin and tie- or hat-pins, which are often quite as important as fastenings, but which may also be highly ornamental. These small articles have a special claim to our attention, as they have been taken as being emblematical of clothes, or at least of female attire. Even now the allowance which a lady is given for dress is called “pin-money.” Moreover, it is possible to illustrate by means of pins the various phases of culture through which mankind has passed in the process of civilization. We meet with pins of bone, in the stage of stone, before metals were used. In the stage characterized by bronze we have pins made of this alloy. Such pins occurred in Egypt before the historic period, and they have been found in the Swiss lake dwellings as well as in our own country.
Fig. 101.—A muff-chain.
Although we now live in the iron, or perhaps more correctly steel, stage of culture, the familiar pin of to-day is still usually made of brass; but nevertheless we find steel pins of the ordinary form which are plated with brass, and glass-headed steel pins are very common. In early times also gold, silver, and precious stones were pressed into service for making ornamental pins, and very handsome pins are represented on effigies of the fourteenth century in Westminster Abbey. These, no doubt, have for their descendants the scarf-pins of to-day.