AIGRETTE

tuft of long, white heron (usually egret) plumes used as a decorative headdress, or any other ornament resembling such a headdress. Such plumes were highly prized as ornaments in Middle Eastern ceremonial dress. Jeweled aigrettes, at first made in the form of a tuft of plumes, became an adornment for turbans in Turkey, particularly during the Ottoman period (12811924). Jeweled aigrettes were listed in royal collections at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries. During the 18th century, they were popular with fashionable European women, who wore them pinned in their hair to hold masses of curls at the back of the head. tuft of long, white heron (usually egret) plumes used as a decorative headdress, or any other ornament resembling such a headdress. Such plumes were highly prized as ornaments in Middle Eastern ceremonial dress. Jeweled aigrettes, at first made in the form of a tuft of plumes, became an adornment for turbans in Turkey, particularly during the Ottoman period (12811924). Jeweled aigrettes were listed in royal collections at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries. During the 18th century, they were popular with fashionable European women, who wore them pinned in their hair to hold masses of curls at the back of the head. town, Gard dpartement, Languedoc-Roussillon rgion, southeastern France, southwest of Nmes, on the Canal du Rhne Ste, with its own 3.5-mile (6-kilometre) canal to the Gulf of Lion. Its name comes from aquae mortuae, the dead waters of the surrounding saline delta marshland. Built by Louis IX as the embarkation port for his two crusades (seventh, 1248; eighth, 1270), the little town is enclosed by crenellated and tower-strengthened walls 25 to 30 feet (8 to 9 m) high, which trace a rectangle roughly 1/2 by 1/4 mile (800 by 400 m). The medieval town plan remains intact. Fishing is a source of revenue, although the port long ago silted up. The principal industries are tourism and the extraction and processing of marsh salt. Pop. (1982) 4,106; (1990) 5,033.