PART II.—TAXIDERMY.
Keeping everlastingly at it brings success.
[CHAPTER XII.]
THE LABORATORY AND ITS APPOINTMENTS.
It would be impossible for me to dwell too strongly upon the importance, nay, even the vital necessity to the taxidermist, of a commodious and suitable workroom, and a good supply of proper tools and materials. Anyone setting up a store of any kind meets the expenditures for fixtures and furniture as a matter of course; but the average taxidermist would consider it a killing thing to invest from $100 to $200 in good tools and materials. First-class tools, and a good assortment of them, are indispensable allies in the production of the finest kind of work in the shortest possible time.
In taxidermy let us have no making of bricks without straw. As well might an artist attempt to paint a grand picture with a sash tool as a taxidermist attempt to mount fine specimens with a dull knife, an old file, and a pair of rusty pliers.
Let us suppose we are fitting up a taxidermic laboratory in which to mount all kinds of vertebrate animals, great and small. To begin with, we must have a good room, if possible 15 X 25 feet, or even larger, with good light, a high ceiling, and an abundant supply of water. There must be somewhere a storeroom for bulky materials, and a drying-room for freshly mounted specimens. There must be provided somewhere, for the wet mammal skins, a big, box-like tank lined with sheet lead, for very large objects, and some alcohol barrels for smaller ones. These must be provided with tight covers, or the salt-and-alum bath will evaporate with great rapidity.
After the above, our laboratory will require the following
Furniture and Fixtures.—A heavy work-table, 8 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 2 feet 6 inches high; top 1-1/2 inch thick.
A tool case and chest of drawers.
A stove, a chopping-block, a heavy bench vise.
A grindstone, a blacksmith's anvil, and portable forge.
A water-tight platform on castors, on which to stand large mammals that are wet and dripping.
Tools.
| 2 killing-knives. | 1 machinist's hammer. |
| 2 cartilage-knives. | 1 hatchet, to lend. |
| 1 pair shears, and 1 pair fine scissors. | 1 sharp hatchet, to use. |
| 1 draw-shave, adjustable handles. | 1 cold chisel. |
| 2 skin-scrapers, of sizes. | 1 set stone-cutter's chisels. |
| 3 gouges, of sizes. | 1 punch. |
| 3 chisels, of sizes. | 1 tap wrench. |
| 1 screw-driver. | 1 pair calipers. |
| 1 2-foot rule. | 1 set of hack saws, for iron and brass. |
| 1 tape-measure, 12 feet. | 1 set iron fillers, of sizes. |
| 1 thread-cutter, for iron. | 1 set wooden fillers, of sizes. |
| 1 thread-cutter, for brass. | 1 set modelling tools. |
| 3 pair pliers, of sizes. | 1 set of files. |
| 3 pair cutting nippers. | 1 set of paint brushes. |
| 4 pair forceps, of sizes. | 1 set of brushes for hair and teeth. |
| 1 hand vise. | 1 gluepot. |
| 1 hand drill. | 1 set of awls. |
| 2 monkey wrenches, of sizes. | 1 set of glover's needles, 3 sizes. |
| 1 ratchet brace, with bits and drills. | Best linen sewing twine, or "gilling |
| 4 gimlet bits, of sizes. | thread," of two or three sizes. |
| 1 hand-saw. | 1 iron thimble. |
| 1 key-hole saw. | 1 spirit-lamp, or gas-stove. |
| 1 claw hammer. | Pails, kettles, cups, bowls, etc. |
| 1 tack hammer. | 12 spools of Barbour's linen thread. |
Materials.—Excelsior; hemp tow of two qualities, coarse and fine, both of long fibre; flax tow, such as upholsterers use; cotton batting; oat straw; potter's clay; good glue; plaster Paris; arsenical soap; spirits of turpentine; benzine; salt by the barrel; ground alum by the hundredweight; pine and hemlock lumber, one to two inches thick; 2×4 pine scantling; an assortment of annealed wire; rods of Norway iron, from 3/16 inch to 1 inch; nails, tacks, wrought-iron staples, screws, nuts, bolts, wrapping twine; rosettes for iron standards; washers, all sizes; alcohol, shellac, white hard oil finish (varnish); muriatic acid, sheet wax, sperm oil; glass eyes, all sizes, kinds and colors; unlimited pluck, patience, and perseverance.
If the worker intends to mount only birds and small mammals, he will need but a very small portion of the tools and materials enumerated above. But fie! Where is the taxidermist worthy of the name who will admit that his resources are limited, or that he is not able and ready to "set up" any animal that may be brought to him, no matter how big or how bad it is. Perish the thought that he is not able to cope with dog, deer, or even elephant.
We now start on the supposition that you have acquired all the tools and materials you are likely to need, and that our subsequent work is not going to halt or hang fire on account of the lack of this or that article.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
PRELIMINARY WORK IN MOUNTING MAMMALS.
Relaxing Dry Skins.—Nearly all mammal skins that go from one country to another are sent in a dry state, and it is a rare exception to obtain a foreign skin in any other condition. It therefore behooves the mammal taxidermist to become a thorough expert in softening dry skins of all kinds and sizes, and bringing them into mountable condition.
To relax a dry skin, rip it open, remove the filling material, and immerse it in a weak but clean salt-and-alum bath (see Chapter IV.) until it becomes soft, be the time required three days or three weeks. If you are in a great hurry, soak the skin at first for a brief period in clear water, and if it is milk-warm, so much the better. Sometimes a skin is so old and hard and refractory that the bath of salt and alum seems to make no impression upon it, in which case try clear water. In a few hours it will yield and collapse, and then it must be put into the bath, or the water will soon macerate it, and cause the hair to slip off. You can leave the skin in the salt-and-alum bath as long as you choose without endangering it in any way.
The inside of every dry skin usually has over it a hard, inelastic coating which, when once gotten rid of by shaving or scraping, leaves the skin underneath measurably soft and elastic, according to its kind. If the skin is a small one, or no larger than that of a wolf, the best way to get it in working order is to lay it flat upon the table, and go at it vigorously with the skin-scraper (see Fig. 24). In this there must be no half-way measures, no modesty, no shirking. Bear on hard, dig away at the same spot with all your energy, first in one direction, then crosswise, then diagonally. Scrape as if you were scraping on a wager, and presently the skin will become so thinned down it will become quite soft, and even elastic. This is hard work, it starts the perspiration and keeps it going, but it will conquer the hardest skin that ever was made.
To make a skin sufficiently elastic to mount, it must be turned wrong-side out and scraped all over thoroughly with a skin-scraper, from nose to tip of tail, and phalanges. Small skins yield far more readily and kindly than the larger ones. The skins that are hardest, horniest, and most refractory are those of the capybara, all of the Suidæ (hogs), and tropical deer. I have mounted skins of these that when first softened were precisely like horn,—and at best with such subjects the resulting specimens are only "passable."
Sometimes when the scraper can make no impression, it becomes necessary to laboriously pare down the inside of an entire skin with the knife before scraping it. This is tedious, but effective, for a sharp knife leaves no room for argument.
[a]Fig. 24.]—Skin-Scrapers, about one-fourth actual size.
All skins larger than a gray wolf, whether they be fresh or dry, need to be stretched on a beam, and pared down with a sharp draw-shave that has adjustable handles. This useful instrument can be bought at any large hardware store for $1.25. Keep it thoroughly sharp. The beam should be about seven feet in length, and six by three inches in size, and laid flat. One end of it is to be bolted firmly down to your bench by two movable iron bolts, and the half which projects beyond the edge of the table must have both of its upper edges rounded off so that it will represent half a cylinder with the convexity uppermost. The table itself must be fastened securely in place. Throw the skin over the rounded end of this beam, drive a stout "scratch-awl" through it, just beyond the reach of your arms, stretch and flatten the skin upon the beam, and with the draw-shave carefully shave down the entire skin until it is thin enough.
Be very careful at first, until your hands acquire skill, or you will cut through the skin, which, in the case of an animal like a hair seal means an unsightly, permanent defect. Do not be afraid of paring a skin too thin so long as you stop at the roots of the hair.
Of course you can not pare down the skin of the head and feet with the draw-shave, and these must be treated with the knife and scraper. The skin of the head of every mammal must be pared down and scraped particularly thin all over, especially the eyelids, lips, and nostrils, so that when these parts are backed up with clay you can model them into exquisitely fine form and expression. If you slight the skin of the head, good-by to all expression; you will merely be able to "stuff" it, and that is all. If its features look coarse, uncouth, and wooden, it will probably be because the thickness and inelasticity of the skin defies your art.
Of course the joints of the feet must be got into working order. The leg bones and skull require to be thoroughly scraped and cleaned, and the skin itself worked up as nearly as possible to the condition of a fresh subject.
Carving Wooden Skulls and Leg Bones.—It is absolutely essential that every mammal to be mounted should have a skull, and all save the smallest should have leg bones also. If the skull and leg bones that belong in a skin are missing, I invariably carve others of the same size out of soft pine to replace the lost members. These bones are imperatively necessary to give shape and length to the various joints and angles of the limbs, to shape the head, to give a foundation for the attachment of wires, and to build upon generally. Very often the skull of an animal is of such value to science that it must be kept out of the skin at all hazards, and exhibited separately. Then it must be duplicated in wood.
Every mammal taxidermist must learn how to carve wooden bones, and the quicker he becomes expert at it, the better. Very few tools are required, and these are as follows: A small hatchet, a pair of 8-inch calipers, a pair of 8-inch dividers, gouges of three sizes, 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 inch; chisels of about four sizes between 3/8 and 1 inch, a draw-shave, a spoke-shave, a good sharp pocket-knife, and the usual supply of boring tools.
PLATE V.[a]Paring Down a Large Mammal Skin.]
To carve a wooden skull, proceed as follows: If you have not the genuine skull to use as a pattern, you must procure one from an animal of the same species, and ascertain its size in comparison with what the wooden skull must be, e.g., whether it be larger or smaller. Then procure a piece of soft pine timber, free from knots, and thick enough to turn out a skull of the proper size. If this can not be found in one piece, glue together several pieces of pine until they form a block of the proper size. On the top of this block place your genuine skull, and trace its outline on the wood, making your outline larger or smaller, as it may need to be, and bilaterally symmetrical. Now take your hatchet and hew the two sides of the block down exactly to this outline. This represents the "ground plan" of the skull.
To get the side elevation, sketch out on the side of this block a side-view outline of the skull, and then hew down to that. With your dividers, locate exactly the inner edge of the orbits, and then mark out with a pencil the entire circle of each orbit. With a gouge carve out the hollows neatly, and then with your flat chisels attack the cranium, round off its angles, and so work over the entire skull.
Measure frequently with the calipers to see that the dimensions are correct. There is no need to go into any of the details of the back part, or basi-occipital portion of the skull, nor with any other details except those that lie on the surface. It is important to shape the orbits, zygomatic arch, the frontal bones, the muzzle and lower jaw, quite accurately, for these bones bear scarcely any flesh. In making skulls for apes and monkeys the greatest care is necessary to produce the facial angle, orbits, and muzzle, so sharply characteristic of the various families.
When a wooden skull is used, the mouth should always be closed, unless it is very necessary to have it open. While it is possible to take moulds from a real skull, and cast a full set of teeth in plaster or lead, or to set real teeth, or painted wooden imitations, into a wooden skull, the result is generally unsatisfactory to a critical eye. When teeth are cast and painted, the paint always changes color with age, causing the teeth to look "made up." If you can not have a real skull with genuine teeth in it, for whatever mammal you are mounting, no one has any right to require that it be mounted with open mouth, unless the head is to go on a rug instead of a scientific specimen.
Observe the following precautions in making a skull:
1. Be sure that it has the proper facial angle.
2. Be sure that it is in no way too large. Better have it too small than too large.
3. Be sure that there are no sharp corners upon it anywhere, lest they come out next to the skin in mounting, and cause trouble.
When a skull is finished, bore a hole (or two in some cases) through it from the occiput to the centre of the nose or mouth, for the passage of the neck irons or wires that are to support the head.
The principles involved in carving skulls apply equally to carving leg bones, except in this work there is much to be done with the draw-shave and spoke-shave. Of course they require to be wired together at the joints, with two wires at each joint, so that the space between them may be channelled out with a gouge to receive the leg iron.
Sewing up Holes in Skins.—After thoroughly cleaning a skin, take a glover's three-cornered needle of the proper size, and a waxed thread from a ball of strong linen thread, or "gilling twine," and sew up all the holes that are to be found in the skin. It requires some little ingenuity sometimes to know just how to trim the edges of a hole so that it can be sewed up without puckering the skin, but a little experimenting will soon reveal the way.
If you have to sew up a cut which has no hair to cover it, sew tightly with a curve-pointed needle, starting the stitches on the inside well back from the edge, and sewing only three-quarters of the way through the skin. Draw the edges tightly together. When the sewing is finished, place a flat bar of iron or wood underneath the seam, and hammer it with a hammer all the way along. This will flatten the ridge formed by the sewing, and will render the seam almost invisible.
In order to do fine work, a taxidermist must be quite expert in the use of the needle and thread. In sewing up skins there are two points to be aimed at, viz.:
2. To sew so neatly that the seam will be as nearly invisible as possible.
For general work one must also have common round needles, and No. 30 thread for very fine sewing, as, for instance, torn eye corners or lips, and holes in the face where the skin is very thin and there is little hair, or none at all; three-cornered glover's needles, Nos. 00, 1, 2, 3; and three sizes of strong linen sewing twine. In the beginning of your work acquire the habit of being particular about the size of the needle and thread you use upon a skin, and never let them be larger than necessary. When special strength is needed, double the thread and wax it with beeswax to prevent its rotting. Always sew with the ball stitch, e.g., from the inside of the skin to the outside, every stitch. It is often convenient to use a curved needle, and this can be made by heating a glover's needle to a red heat in the flame of a spirit lamp and curving it while hot.
How to Make Long Needles.—In making manikins, and also for other purposes, it is necessary to have a set of needles varying in length from six to eighteen inches, or even longer. You can buy needles up to ten inches in length from anyone who keeps upholsterers' supplies, but the longer ones you must make for yourself. To do this, take a piece of No. 12 or 13 steel wire and grind one end to a point. For the eye, heat the other end red hot, flatten it with the hammer, then heat it again, lay it on a bar of lead, and with a brad-awl and hammer punch an eye in it while hot.
Neck Irons in Mounting Mammals.—Never allow a neck iron to come through the top of the skull, through the forehead, or through the face anywhere. The neck iron, which must support the entire weight of the head and neck, should pass through the back of the skull and into the nasal cavity. Let the iron extend some inches beyond the end of the nose until the neck is made, and the head placed in position, for not until then can you tell what length the neck iron should be. When the head is well-nigh finished, take a small hack-saw and saw off the neck iron close up to the nasal cavity, so far from the end of the nose that by no possible chance can the animal shrink so much in drying that the end of the iron will protrude through one of the nostrils and into view.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
PRINCIPLES OF UNIVERSAL APPLICATION IN MOUNTING
THE HIGHER VERTEBRATES.
General Remarks.—We may assume that any one who is ambitious to excel in taxidermic work desires to do so by the high character of his productions, and the recommendation they silently give him. I am well convinced that any one who takes the trouble to read this book will welcome the following principles that apply very generally in mounting the higher vertebrates, and are, at all events, intended to increase the average of general excellence and permanency in mounted specimens.
A place in the front rank of taxidermists is not to be easily won. It can only be accomplished by the studious methods of the sculptor, the experience and observation of the field naturalist, and a combination of these with technical and mechanical skill in the laboratory. The painter paints but one side of his animal, and he is not hampered by bulk or measurements. The sculptor blithely builds up his clay model, with neither skin, bones, nor hair to vex his soul. The taxidermist must not only equal the form of the sculptor's clay model, but he must also make it to fit a certain skin with exactitude.
The ideal taxidermist must be a combination of modeller and anatomist, naturalist, carpenter, blacksmith, and painter. He must have the eye of an artist, the back of a hod-carrier, the touch of a wood-chopper one day, and of an engraver the next.
With increased skill on the part of the workers has come increased appreciation on the part of museum officials, and higher salaries. Let me say to aspiring beginners, there is plenty of room at the top, and money and glory to spare for those who get there. But there is no royal road to fortune in this business. Success means years of earnest work and study.
With the understanding, therefore, that we are aiming at perfection, and that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," we will endeavor to call attention to a few principles which underlie all good work in taxidermy. At the same time I will try to point out a few of the most common faults generally observable in mounted specimens.
Permanency.—This is the foundation on which every specimen must be built in order to be first class. A preserved and mounted animal that has not enough solidity and stability to stand the test of time is unworthy of a place in any museum or private residence, for its existence is sure to terminate speedily in disappointment, disgust, and loss. During the last eight years the National Museum and American Museum of Natural History have thrown away and otherwise gotten rid of enough stuffed specimens to stock a small museum, and all because of poor and unstable taxidermic work only twenty years ago.
A taxidermist who knows his business can mount a specimen to last ten years or ten hundred, just as he chooses. If you, like a certain taxidermist I once knew, believe in "quantity not quality," then you, like him, can use small and weak supporting irons ("they work so much easier than heavy ones!"), half clean your skins and skulls, ram a skin full of excelsior, straw, paper, and rubbish from your dirt-box, sew it up with long stitches and cheap twine, cram its eyes and nostrils with nasty putty, and insert the cheapest eyes obtainable. Then, while the specimen may look passably well during its first six months, by the end of two years its sides will be a succession of hills and hollows, its seams will be ripped and gaping wide open, its nose will be shrivelled up and shapeless, its ears will look like dry autumn leaves; it will lean over helplessly to one side, and will also have settled down upon its feet until they are shapeless deformities.
This is no fancy picture, for it fairly represents the condition of many a buffalo, deer, and moose that I have been called upon to either dismount, remount, or destroy. A dishonest taxidermist may slight the interior work of a specimen and have it escape detection for six months, or even a year, but time soon tells the story. Dishonest or careless work, like murder, will out. In a bird, it expresses itself in a look of roughness, and a general falling away from grace at all points.
To secure perfect stability and permanence in a mounted specimen, observe conscientiously the following principles in its construction:
1. Pare every skin down thin, so that its shrinking power will be reduced to a minimum. This will prevent its seams from opening.
2. Poison with the utmost thoroughness, so that even though the specimen should chance to stand unprotected for years where insect pests are thickest, they can find nothing to feed upon in its hair or feathers.
3. Use heavy supporting irons or wires, as heavy as the specimen will accommodate without sacrificing the form and position of legs and feet. The fault of using the lightest possible supports is entirely too common, and is so thoroughly reprehensible in a taxidermist that it becomes a vice.
4. Make the mechanical structure of every specimen (e.g., the fastening together of the body, limbs, head, neck, and tail), so firm that the rigidity of all is complete. It is then, and only then, in your power to place any member of the body in a desirable attitude and have it remain fixed.
5. Every portion of the skin should rest upon a firm, smooth surface of clay, excelsior, straw, or tow, according to circumstances. If there are lumps under the skin, they will appear soon after it is dry, and destroy its smoothness. If there are hollows, the result will be the same.
6. The larger the specimen the thicker is the skin, and consequently the harder and more unyielding should be the material it rests upon. Do not make a manikin with hoop iron and burlap, and a little loose filling between that and the skin, for specimens so mounted nearly always come to grief. If you stuff a skin with straw, excelsior, or tow, pack the filling in a solid mass, for with the lapse of time all such materials are bound to shrink, no matter how hard you make them at first. The shrinkage of straw is often remarkable and highly disastrous.
Attitude.—On this subject no fixed rules can be offered. To one fact, however, which should always be borne in mind by the preparator, I must call special attention, and that is as follows: Animals of all kinds, even in a state of nature, and entirely of their own volition, often assume attitudes that are highly ungraceful, unpleasing to the eye, and anything but fairly representative of the creature's form and habits. This being the case, do not make the mistake of concluding that because you have seen a particular animal assume a particular attitude, it is "natural," and therefore you can do no better than to reproduce that attitude in the specimen you are mounting. No, a thousand times no. This mistake will lead to the reproduction of many an ugly attitude, even though like life itself.
Every animal is capable of assuming scores of different attitudes, and from all these you should choose the one which is most strikingly characteristic of the subject, most truly representative, and which does the animal the same sort of justice that you seek at the hands of the artist when you go to have your own picture taken. On such occasions you do not lounge ungracefully, nor "stand stoop-shouldered," nor look listless; you stand erect, at your full height, and look your very best. Make your animal do the same.
For your own picture you do not assume a violent and tragic attitude, nor anything strained. You stand or sit at ease, quietly but intently regarding something in particular; or your attitude may with equal propriety represent a moment of rest in the course of some quiet action. Pose your mounted specimens according to the same principles, and the results will be most satisfactory to all. The choice of an attitude depends wholly upon your artistic instincts, "upon your eye," so to speak. Choose that one which is most graceful or grand, and is at the same time truly characteristic of the subject. To my mind, the attitude taken by an animal when startled by visible or suspected danger, is the one par excellence in which it appears at its best when mounted. Under such conditions the animal always stands fully erect, head aloft, and with every sense keenly on the alert. The next best attitude is that which represents an animal quietly walking or climbing, according to its habits and modes of progression.
The subject of groups and grouping will be considered in full later on in this work.
Proportions.—On this point a single observation will be sufficient. The taxidermist often receives, from the zoological gardens and menageries, specimens that are very thin in flesh. In mounting an animal, do not let your knowledge of anatomy run away with your judgment, art, and even nature itself, by producing a tiger, panther, zebra, or buffalo with all its ribs showing, and its scapula, pelvis, and vertebral column all standing out in bold relief. Unless the individuals of a given species are always scrawny, I pray you, for the sake of truth and justice, do not make your solitary representative of that species look like a candidate for special honors at a bone-yard.
Let me assure you, on the honor of a hunter, that animals in a state of nature are nearly always well fed and plump-looking, and show very few bones. It is easy to make ribs on a clay-covered manikin, but do not do it on a wild animal, unless you deliberately intend to produce a starveling. According to its nature, make every animal look well-fed and in good condition, but not fat. It seldom happens that a wild animal in a state of nature grows really fat, but it is still more seldom that one looks under-fed and poor. If fatness is a special characteristic of a species, then fat let it be, but scrawny never.
Above all things, avoid in your birds and quadrupeds the half-filled body which makes the subject look as if it had been eviscerated. The abdomen is always convex, not concave.
The Uses of Clay as a Filling Material.—The value of clay in the mounting of mammals, reptiles, and fishes can hardly be overestimated. Previous to 1880 its use among the taxidermists of my acquaintance was unknown, and when its value was discovered and put to general use by the writer, in the year mentioned, many of my rivals predicted all manner of evil from it. They declared it would destroy skins, go to dust within them, become soft mud in damp weather, crack, etc. I persisted in its use, disproving all evil prognostications, and now its general use really marks a new era in American taxidermy. By means of this common and cheap material it is not only possible but easy to mount a horse, a seal, a hairless dog, a turtle, snake, fish, or any other animal, with absolute accuracy in every detail of form and size. Not only is this true, but, so far as I can discover, there is no other material than clay with which these results can be accomplished. For covering manikins, coating the skulls of large animals, and for filling in the nose, mouth, eyes, and ears, it is everything that could be desired. With it a stretched skin,
"A world too wide for his shrunk shank,"
can be worked together on the clay-covered manikin, and reduced in size until it fits without the slightest visible wrinkle, or any cutting out such as used to be necessary by the old methods.
To prepare clay for use, take the clean, worked chunks of soft potter's clay (which costs about two cents per pound, and should be quite free from sand and grit), put the right quantity in a pail, and pour a little water upon it. With the hands knead it until the water is taken up, and it becomes as soft as dough. It will, of course, be quite sticky, and in this state is altogether too soft to use except to cover a large manikin, in which case it must be soft enough to spread easily with the hand. For ordinary use, however, chop up finely, with the hatchet, some clean hemp tow of long fibre, and mix it thoroughly with the clay, which can be done only with the hand. This makes the clay more stiff, about like soft putty, and of the proper consistency for filling into feet, cheeks, eyes, mouth, nose, etc. If the clay is too soft, you will have difficulty in making it retain the proper form under the skin. If it is too stiff, it balls up, and you can not work it along under the skin from one part to another. When you learn to make it of just the right consistency it works to perfection, no matter where you put it, and will forever retain the form your fingers give it by pressure from without. Elsewhere will be given more detailed advice in regard to the various uses of clay.
Coloring.—The time was when American curators held it sacrilege to paint the soft parts of birds, and the hairless portions of certain mammals. For my part, I have always fought that idea unconditionally, in season and out of season, and I am glad to say that within the last eight years it has been utterly abandoned. Clearly, it is better to reproduce the colors of soft parts as accurately as one can, rather than let them remain in a colorless, dry, and mummified condition, hideous to the eye and meaningless to the understanding. By all means let us color everything that has color in life, though the heavens fall. Ascertain in some way what the color should be (this can often be done by reference to books with colored plates), then paint accordingly. Paint with turpentine and oil, rather than with oil alone, which leaves an unnatural gloss. You can tone down any oil color, however, by stippling it with a stipple brush dipped in a pan of dry color, or plaster Paris. The taxidermist who can paint the exposed parts of his specimens accurately and artistically has a very powerful advantage over all those who can not. This subject will also receive special attention elsewhere.
General Finish.—In all work on specimens, cultivate a delicate and artistic touch, and then leave its impress upon everything you do. Do not leave a specimen looking as if a coal heaver had finished it. Work at it, and keep on working at it until it is perfect; and then go back to it the next day, and work at it some more! There is no inferno too deep or too hot for a slovenly, slatternly taxidermist. The fault with such workers usually lies not so much in their lack of skill as in their lack of patience and the dogged stick-to-itiveness that conquers all difficulties, no matter whether they come singly, in platoons, or by divisions. Delicacy is just as essential in the production of good work as originality and strength.
[CHAPTER XV.]
MOUNTING SMALL MAMMALS.
In attempting to give the beginner a fair start in the general work of mounting small mammals of all sorts, from mice up to small foxes, I will describe in detail the entire process of mounting a typical specimen, which in this instance will be a squirrel. This will embody all the general principles involved, and after having laid this foundation we will proceed to consider exceptional cases, and describe the manner in which they must be met. The exceptional cases are bats, rabbits, young animals of the smaller species, and a few others.
We will assume that the subject before us is either a "dry skin" which has been fully relaxed, scraped, and rendered perfectly pliable and elastic, or else "a fresh skin," i.e., one which has been preserved in our antiseptic solution (the salt-and-alum bath) or possibly in alcohol, and has therefore never been dried. For the sake of the beginner's courage, which should never be taken out of him at the very first onset by putting him on a dry skin of doubtful quality, we will take the skin of a fine, old, gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) which lies in the bath waiting to be immortalized—or something else.
It may easily happen that for good and sufficient reasons the beginner has no salt-and-alum bath, and can not prepare one. In that event the skin can be mounted immediately after it is taken off the animal, only it is necessary to apply to it after the arsenical soap, as directed hereafter, a copious quantity of powdered alum. If you have no arsenical soap, then as you proceed with the mounting moisten the inside of the skin with water, and rub on powdered alum and arsenic, mixed in equal parts, and be sure that the skin is everywhere coated with it eventually. This leaves the fur dry and clean, and will save you the trouble of drying and dressing it.
On taking our squirrel skin from the bath to mount it we find its texture is firm, and it is somewhat shrunken in size, so that when it is filled out it will not stretch all out of proportion. If either in haste or carelessness you have left a layer of flesh upon the skin, pare it off until the inside of the skin is quite clean. If any holes have been cut by bullets or knives, sew then up from the inside with a strong linen thread and a No. 3 glover's needle—three-cornered.
Now for the wires. Measure the leg bones from the sole of the foot to the end of the thigh-bone, add three inches for what the wire must project beyond the sole of the foot, five inches more at the other end, and cut a No. 15 annealed iron wire[8] of the length thus obtained, for each hind leg. The length of the wires for the forelegs is obtained in the same way. Thus for our squirrel, the wires for the hind legs must be fourteen inches long, and for the forelegs twelve.
Cut another No. 15 wire twice the length from the back of the head to the root of the tail, and this will be the body wire eighteen inches long. The tail wire must be smaller, No. 17, long enough to reach from the tip of the tail to the centre of the body—seventeen inches. Straighten all these wires carefully, lay them together on the table, and remember the purpose of each. If they are rusty, rub them with sand paper. File one end of the tail wire to a tapering point, for the tip of our squirrel's tail is very slender.
We are now ready to make one of the legs, and will begin with one of the hind legs. Take one of the two longest wires, pass one end of it through the slit in the skin at the bottom of the foot, let it project three inches beyond the sole of the foot, and up into the skin of the leg. Now bend the wire until it fits closely along the under side of the leg bones as seen in the accompanying illustration. Tie it firmly with linen thread to the bones of the foot, to the tibia and the femur, as seen in the accompanying illustration.
[a]Fig. 25.]—Leg-making and Wiring.
Now take fine, clean tow, of good long fibre, and, beginning at the foot, proceed to wrap it around the leg bones, smoothly and evenly, to replace the muscles which have been cut away. The lower part of the leg is flat on the inside and round on the outside, almost bare of flesh at the ankle. Remember always that the flesh on the "calf" of the leg, and the forearm, lies behind the bones, swelling out toward the back and the inside of the limb, and in front the skin lies upon the bone itself. Observe this, and build up the muscles accordingly. The thigh is broad and much flattened, rounded on the outside only, as you must have noticed when you skinned it and cut off the flesh, and the knee-pan is prominent. To make the leg this shape, first wind some tow around the thigh bone, then make up a little roll of tow a little larger than your forefinger, place it along the under side of the thigh and wind it fast there with tow. By a judicious continuation of this process, you can make the thigh of the proper width and flatness both above and below the bone. At no point is a squirrel's thigh more than three-fourths of an inch thick, and the calf, the arm, and the forearm are even less. By reference to the tracing made of the animal in the flesh, you will be able to tell the width of the legs at all points and correct your work all the way along.
In all thin-haired animals the tendon of the heel must be made by drilling a hole through the end of the heel-bone, passing a small wire through for half its length, then twisting the wire together half-way up to the knee. Wind a little fine tow around this wire, gradually increasing the quantity from the heel upward until the false tendon is complete, and the upper end is wound in with the tow which forms the lower part of the thigh. In small mammals which have long, thick hair, as our squirrel for example, it is not necessary to make the tendon, as it does not show. Remember there is no flesh on the upper part of the foot-bones, but considerable underneath.
It is not best to make the legs extremely hard, or they will be difficult to bend, but at the same time the tow must not be put on in a loose, slovenly manner. Avoid making the legs too large; the opposite extreme is the lesser evil of the two.
When the leg is finished, anoint the skin of that leg with arsenical soap, rub either a little wet clay or thick soap over the tow leg so that it will slip into the skin easily, then turn the skin up over it and adjust it from the foot up. If the leg does not fit, turn the skin back and alter its shape until it does fit perfectly. This done satisfactorily, insert a little clay or finely chopped tow in the bottom of the foot, bend the wire so that it leaves the foot at a right angle, sew up the cut, and you are ready to proceed in like manner with the three remaining legs. Be sure to make both legs of each pair precisely alike if you wish to have a healthy-looking animal when finished.
Having made all the legs, the next thing is the tail. Take some of your finest tow in your right hand, the tail wire in your left, begin at the pointed end, and by turning the wire constantly from left to right, let it wind up the tow which runs between your right thumb and finger. Make the tail of a regular taper, perfectly smooth, and not too large. Try it in the skin occasionally to insure accuracy. If the first one is a failure, discard it and make another. When at last you have what is required, anoint the inside of the tail skin with arsenical soap, slip the false tail into its place, and if the tail has been slit open, sew it up neatly all the way along, commencing at the tip.
Now punch a small hole in the back of the skull a little above the occipital opening, pass the end of the body wire through it, force the end through into the nasal cavity and on out at the end of the nose. Let the end of the wire also pass through one of the nostrils of the skin for about two inches. Now put some soft clay on the sides of the skull and jaw to replace the muscles which have been cut away, and fill the orbits with the same material. Anoint the skin of the head and neck with the arsenical soap, turn it back over the skull, and when the skull is once more in its proper position in the skin, which can best be determined by noticing whether the eye opening comes over the centre of the orbit, drive a tack over each eye through the skin and into the bone.
Another tack at the top of the head will also do good service in holding the skull in its place while the grand struggle with the body is going on, for the head is the last thing finished. Life is too short and space too valuable to allow me to explain fully why all these things must be done, but if you neglect any of these simple directions you will very soon find out why they were given.
The legs and tail are wired and made, the skull is in its place, with one end of the body wire passing through it, and we are now ready to wire all the parts of the animal together. The skin lies on the clean table before us, right side out, with the legs in the same position as when we drew the outline. Bend the inner ends of the foreleg wires back from the head of the humerus at an obtuse angle, and let them cross each other like the limbs of an X, as seen in the accompanying figure. At the point where they cross each other, turn a little ring in the body wire, six inches from the end, just large enough for the two wires to pass through easily. For this purpose you will find a pair of round-nosed pliers convenient. Pass the end of each foreleg wire through the ring, and let them cross again, with the wire of the left leg underneath the other.
[a]Fig. 26.]—Wiring Together.
Now refer to your outline, measure the distance between the extremities of the toes, and it will tell you exactly how to adjust the leg wires so as to get the right distance between the two ends of the humeri, or, in other words, the shoulders. The wire between the head of the humerus and the ring represents the scapula, and, if rightly measured, will enable us later on to pose the forelegs with ease and success.
Now, with the round-nosed pliers in the left hand, grasp the three wires firmly at the ring, lay hold of the two leg wires with the flat-nosed pliers and give two complete turns to the right, twisting the wires together as tightly as possible. Bend up the body wire to one of the leg wires, and, leaving out the other, give these two a couple of turns. Take the other leg wire and body wire and give them a twist. If the legs are now solidly together, it is enough, but if they are not, this twisting process must be continued until they are perfectly firm. No looseness, if you please.
This done, straighten out the body wire once more, arrange the skin as before, according to your outlines, and you will soon see that the ring for the hind legs must be turned about five inches below the first one. The ends of the hind-leg wires are bent slightly forward (toward the head) from the ends of the femora, and also cross each other in the ring. After getting the hind legs the right distance apart, give the wires two turns as before, then bend the free end of the body wire straight up and over until it points toward the head. Proceed with it precisely as with the other leg wires until the hind legs are immovably fixed on it. Now give the free ends of the wires each a turn around the middle of the body wire and thus fasten all together, forming a backbone of twisted iron wire.
The end of the tail wire must pass under the hind-leg wires (as the skin lies on its back), and after giving a turn or two around the wire backbone, tie it fast with strong twine. The tail must be as firmly fixed upon the body wire as though it was soldered there. This done, wrap a goodly quantity of tow tightly and smoothly around the wire backbone, so that the numerous ends of wire, and the irregularities in the mass of twisted wire, will not cause trouble when we come to fill the body. Now that you no longer need to put your hands inside the skin, anoint it most thoroughly with the soap, from the back of the head to the base of the tail. While the skin is absorbing the soap, take a hatchet and chop up finely a quantity of coarse tow. With your longest forceps, cover the inside of the skin with a layer of cut tow, placing it between the wires and the skin. It is highly important to have a good thick cushion of it next to the skin at the shoulders, hips, and along the back.
[a]Fig. 26]a.—The Legs Wired Together.
This is the time to give the animal the attitude it is to have when finished. All the members are now completely under control, and we can give the animal any pose we wish. Bend up each leg at a right angle to its present position, making the bend abruptly at the head of each femur, and thus leave between them the same distance that separated them when they joined the pelvis in life. Likewise bend up the foreleg, by making nearly a right angle in the leg wire at the head of each humerus, and leave the proper space between the shoulders. With the play that is given to the forelegs, by means of the distance left between the shoulder point and the ring, we are able to adjust the forelegs with the greatest freedom, to move each shoulder either up or down, and increase or lessen the distance between them at will.
The most pert and characteristic attitude of a squirrel is sitting up on its haunches, either on the alert, eating something held in its paws, or, perhaps, washing its face with its paws. This attitude is rather difficult to get, but it is well worth trying for. Bend each hind leg at the knee until the thigh touches the calf and rests upon it. Bend the ankle-joint until the foot makes an acute angle with the calf. Make a very decided curve in the backbone, so as to throw the body well forward between the knees, which must come nearly opposite the centre of the body. Push the hind legs up into the body so that the squirrel can sit upon his tail.
The elbows drop down until they almost touch the knees, which is partly accomplished by curving the back. Just below the shoulders the backbone must be curved, to throw the head and shoulders up, and hold them well erect. Give the head the pose you wish it to have, slightly turned to one side, let us say.
The next step, a very important one, is filling the body. If you do not do it intelligently, your squirrel will need to find a grave in the ash barrel. The mechanical part of this filling process is exceedingly simple, and everything, or nearly everything, depends upon how much you know of the anatomy of the animal before you. This is a private matter between yourself and nature. Your hand will nearly always be able to keep up with your eye if you give it a fair chance.
With your long forceps, which work like a dextrous thumb and finger eight inches long, pick up the chopped tow, and little by little insert it in the skin where it is needed. First fill out above the backbone until you get the desired outline, in profile, of the back and shoulders from tail to head. Then fill out the shoulders and form them properly. Fill in the neck, first around the base of the skull, and sew up the neck skin from the end of the cut downward for about two inches, and without cutting off your thread insert more chopped tow in the neck and shoulders, packing it firmly, if you have the proportions right. Do not allow the tow to roll up into wads and make the skin full of hills and hollows on the outside. The pressure of the tow on all points of the skin should be the same, and the filling must be packed firmly and evenly, so that the finished animal will keep its shape tenaciously in the struggle for existence, and not collapse at a firm touch.
One secret of success in filling the body lies in gradually and equally filling out the entire body to fair proportions before finishing any one part. Give the animal its exact attitude, then proceed. If there is an apparent lack of skin at any particular point, attack that first, and fill it out. You will soon find how easy it is to draw skin from one part of the body to another by judicious filling.
Having finished the neck and shoulders, leave that part and go to the haunches. Fill around the base of the tail, the hips, the upper part of the thighs, and the abdomen. Be careful to make both sides alike. Commence at the root of the tail and sew up the opening for about two inches, without catching the hair in your stitches, after which you may bore two small holes in a pine board, the proper distance apart, pass the two hind leg wires through, and set the little animal up. This is only a trial trip, and if you find the feet are not the proper distance apart (or the squirrel does not walk properly, if you have put him in a walking attitude), or does not sit properly, take him off the board and remedy the defects. When you have corrected his attitude, proceed with the filling, sewing up from both below and above, until the body is properly shaped, filled full of tow, and the opening entirely sewn up.
Now comb the tow out of the damp fur, and, if it is dirty, wash it with washing soda, soap and water until it is thoroughly clean. Place the animal upon its board pedestal, and correct the attitude with the utmost care before you bend the wires up underneath the board and clinch them fast. If the specimen is even a moderate success thus far, we will go on with it.
If the animal you are mounting is a tree-climber, and you wish to mount it upon a tree limb, select one for the purpose, and, according to your desire to have it nearly perpendicular, slanting, or horizontal, saw it off at the lower end, plant it firmly upon a rough board pedestal, and fasten it by putting two long, stout screws through the board and up into the base of the branch. Put your specimen upon the branch as nearly in position as possible, mark the places where the holes should be bored, and bore them with a bit of the proper size. You can then run the ends of the leg wires through, draw the feet down closely, and clinch the wires on the opposite side.
As soon as the little animal is firmly fixed on his temporary pedestal, or his branch, which must be permanent, we are ready to give the final touches to the body. We will, with thumb and finger, press in the shoulders if they are too high or wide, flatten the body by pressure if it is too round on the sides, and emphasize the undulating outline of the sides also by pressure. If there is a hollow spot where the surface should be smooth, thrust a sharp awl through the skin, catch some tow on the point of the awl, and, with a sharp lifting motion, pull the fibre up until it fills out the hollow. If there is a lump of tow under the skin, making an unsightly hump, thrust the point of the awl through into it, and spread it out underneath until the skin lies flat. It is often necessary to work all over the body of an animal with the awl in this way.
We have now to finish the head. With the cutting pliers, cut off the end of the body wire close up to the skull, so that the end will be hidden. Adjust the skin so that it fits naturally and easily on the skull and around the mouth, and see that the eyes come over the centre of the orbits. If the clay which was put upon the skull does not fill out the jaws and sides of the head quite naturally, push in a little chopped tow until the proper form is obtained.
[a]Fig. 27.]—The Finished Specimen.
Avoid getting one jaw fuller than the other; it is only boys and men who chew tobacco who have cheeks that are not bilaterally symmetrical. Avoid getting one eye too far back, forward, up or down, but match the one that is correctly placed.
Fill in the end of the nose, the lips, and the chin with clay, fold the lips naturally and press them into place. If the skin around the mouth is not unnaturally drawn back, the lips will stay in place, and dry there without any fastening. If the skin is drawn too far back, the lips must be pinned in place until they dry. The advantage in using clay for filling out the head is that it enables you to press the skin down upon it and mould all the parts into their natural shape and size, without giving to the head that unnatural, puffed out, stuffed appearance, which is almost unavoidable when tow only is used.
Introduce clay at the eye opening until the addition of the glass eye inside will make the organ sufficiently prominent. Insert the glass eye edgewise through the opening, turn it in position and embed it in the clay. With a large needle, or your awl, adjust the eyelids upon the glass, and if the eye is not right, work it into its proper position. Adjust both eyes alike, and, above all, see to it that they both look at the same point, be that point real or imaginary.
The same amount of iris must show in each eye, and the position of the pupils must correspond exactly. Do not make them unusually staring, as though about to burst from their sockets. It is the eye more than any other one feature that gives any animal, living or stuffed, its expression, and this is due entirely to the arrangement of the lid and brow. The eyeball has, in itself, no more power of varied expression than a glass marble; therefore the facial expression of a mounted animal is wholly under the control of the taxidermist, provided he takes the trouble to procure good glass eyes of the right size and quality.
Unless the ears of your specimen are very small and insignificant, it will be necessary to cut two pieces of thin card-board the shape of each ear, but larger, and after getting the ear in position, pin it between them, so that it will be held in a natural position and good shape until it dries. Do not thrust the pins through the ear, but through the card-board around the edge. The last thing is to arrange the toes and feet naturally, and pin each toe in place until it dries. Since our squirrel is to be holding a nut, we will cut off the foreleg wires, all but half an inch, and bring the paws close together at the proper elevation. We must now drill two small holes in opposite sides of a hickory nut, force the wires into them until the nut rests nicely in the paws, and there let it remain. If necessary, we will tie the toes in position around the nut until they are dry. It is a common fault with beginners in taxidermy to slight the toes of their specimens, both birds and mammals, and, as a result, all such specimens have a slovenly, tramp-like appearance.
Nature alone can tell you how to pose the tail to represent the state of the animal's feelings. Try to look at your work with the eye of an artist, analyze it, and catalogue its faults, so that you will be sure to avoid them in the next specimen.
If the hair needs no more washing, comb it out carefully at the last moment, and set your specimen on a shelf to dry, out of the dust if possible, and out of the sunshine, and watch it while it is drying to see that the head and feet dry in good shape. At the end of two weeks, or perhaps three, the little mammal will be dry and hard, and ready for the last touches. Pull out all the pins which have been holding the toes, ears, lips, or eye corners in place, and if they leave any holes, fill them up with putty. I have not told you how to stuff a head with the mouth open, and model the soft parts in papier-maché and wax, because you will hardly want to try anything so difficult at present, and it involves processes which cannot be described within the limits of this chapter.
When your mammal is quite dry, dress the fur with a fine comb and brush, and beat it with a small piece of whalebone or a little switch, to make it stand out from the skin, full and fluffy, as in life. This end must be accomplished, no matter how long it takes.
Procure some tube colors, oil and turpentine, equal parts, and a small sable brush, with which to tint the eyelids and the end of the nose their natural color. Put a little varnish and turpentine, equal parts of each, on the toe-nails, and, in short, do everything you can that will give the specimen the look of a living animal. If it looks stuffed, put it in the darkest corner of your cabinet, and try another. The glass eyes must be cleaned with great care, and polished with a soft cotton rag until they glisten.
At the last moment change the rough board pedestal for a permanent one, either of black walnut, polished, or ash, planed and sand-papered very smooth, and covered with two coats of shellac. If you have perched your squirrel on the top of a small stump, sawed off square at the bottom, or upon a large branch, with a section of the trunk serving as a base, of course no artificial base is necessary. Artificial branches for mounted birds are bad enough, but for mammals they are altogether too bad, and should never be used.
In conclusion, do not expect that your first mammal is going to be an overpowering success. Do not take a cat for your first subject, for a cat is the most difficult of all small quadrupeds to mount successfully. A tough old squirrel is the best thing for you to wrestle with until you have learned the method thoroughly.
Exceptional Cases.—There are certain classes of small mammals whose skins should not be put through the salt and alum bath, if possible to avoid it, for several reasons. These are the young of the smaller mammalia, especially such as rabbits, squirrels, and other familiar forms. It is by far the best plan to mount all such skins as soon as they are taken off, without wetting the hair, and using dry arsenic and alum, equal parts, to preserve and poison them. The bones of young animals become quite soft in the bath, and the hair is difficult to dress to look like life. The fur of a rabbit is the meanest fur in the world to comb out and dress to look fluffy and immaculate after it has once been wet with salt-and-alum water. Mount them without wetting when you can, only poison them well against moths. Alcohol is far preferable to the bath for the skins of such species as the above, and, as our English cousins would say, is "not half bad."
Mounting Bats.—Having tried all known methods of mounting and displaying these pestiferous little subjects, I finally evolved an arrangement which I now conceitedly believe is the only satisfactory solution of the difficulties they present. My plan is to mount the bat without any wires, save in the legs of the larger species, and when finished lay it on its back on a smooth board, spread the wings, put pieces of pasteboard over the membrane until all is covered, and pin them down. Of course the wings must be in perfect position. When the specimen is dry, apply some royal glue of the best quality to the back of each wing, and stick his batship permanently on a strip of thick plate glass, which has been prepared previously by being cut to the proper size, and ground on the edges.
[a]Fig. 28.]—Author's Method of Mounting Bats on Glass.
The accompanying cut (Fig. 28) was drawn from a specimen as exhibited, omitting the label. The advantages of this arrangement are as follows: It shows the specimen perfectly on both sides; the wings do not warp and shrivel up; it is possible to repair breaks in the wing membrane, and the most delicate specimen is well protected. The strip of glass stands on edge in a deep groove which has been cut to fit it tightly in the top of a flat, narrow pedestal having the usual moulded edge.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
MOUNTING LARGE MAMMALS.—ORDINARY METHODS.
Section 1. Long-haired Mammals of Medium Size.—Examples: Wolves, certain dogs, large apes, baboons and monkeys; the smaller bears, hair seals, all long-haired quadrupeds from the size of the fox to the Newfoundland dog; also, all old dry skins of mammals between the two sizes mentioned.
While it will be advised in Section III. of this subject to mount short-haired skins of the above sizes upon clay-covered manikins, it is very often an impossibility to pursue this course with a dry skin, no matter what its pelage may be like. Dry skins more than one year old are usually so shrunken, hard, and inelastic, that in circumference they are one or two sizes smaller than life, and it is very often impossible to stretch them sufficiently to make them fit over a manikin of the right size. The only way in which enough power can be brought to bear upon them to force them to stretch to their proper size in neck and body, is to fill them with straw, and ram it so hard that the skin is forced to stretch. Even if you fill a shrunken body so full that it will stretch no more, if you keep it thoroughly moist, or even wet, in wet cloths, and return to the charge next day with more straw and muscle, you will find that the skin yields a good deal more, and perhaps reaches the right size without further protest. Very often this is the only treatment that will save an old, dry skin from becoming a total loss. In all such cases fill out the worst shrunken parts first, to make sure of conquering them, and leave the less difficult portions to the last.
The chief differences between the method described in the previous chapter for mounting small mammals, and that for the subjects included in this section are simply these: (1.) The larger animals require leg wires or irons that are too large to be bent at will and twisted together. (2.) Where rods are used, a thread must be cut on the lower end of each to receive a nut under the pedestal, because leg rods can not be fastened in any other way. (3.) A stout wooden bar must be used in the body for the leg, head, and tail wires, or irons, to run through, and upon which all these can be stapled down firmly. (4.) For various reasons, it is best that all these animals should be filled with straw by the old process of stuffing.
To mount a specimen belonging in this section, proceed precisely as directed in the previous chapter, with wiring and making each leg, except where the specimen is so large that it requires rods for the legs instead of wires. It is only the larger and heavier animals of this section, viz., the wolves, large dogs, large kangaroos, anthropoid apes, and the like, that require rods instead of wires. For your foxes, baboons, and small kangaroos, you can use wires of the large sizes, of about the same proportionate length as for your squirrel. In getting out the rods for the legs of your large specimens, use Norway iron, because it is toughest, and proceed as follows:
Decide upon the attitude of your specimen, then lay the bones of each leg in its intended position on the table, take a straight wire of large size (No. 9) and bend it to fit the back of the leg bones, precisely where you wish your rod to go. Leave an end about two and one-half inches long, projecting straight downward from the centre of the foot, to go through the pedestal and receive a nut underneath. Cut a thread on this lower end, and fit a hexagonal nut. For the hind legs, let the upper end of each rod project beyond the upper end of the femur for a distance equal to about two-thirds the length of that bone. The irons to support the head should be two in number, and should be long enough to reach from the end of the nose to the centre of the body. The tail iron will be regulated by circumstances.
The Hand of an Anthropoid Ape.—It nearly always happens that every skin of a large gorilla, chimpanzee, or orang utan is totally destitute of bones. Now the hand of such an animal is a very important feature. Do not attempt to make it with wires and tow alone, for if you do, the fingers will be semicircles, resembling the half of an over-brown doughnut. Each joint must show an angle, and each finger be flat on the inside. The accompanying cut (Fig. 29) shows how to make the hand of an anthropoid ape so that it shall be as natural as life. The wooden bones give the proper angles at the joints, and the tow-wrapped wire underneath gives the finger its proper breadth. When all is ready, cover each finger manikin with clay, make the palm hollow and flat, and let the end of the iron rod come out in the centre of the palm. This method gives a hand that is beyond criticism. For hand and foot studies of apes and monkeys, see "The Standard Natural History," vol. v., page 512.
[a]Fig. 29.]—Artificial Skeleton for Hand of an Orang Utan.
The following animals, when of adult size, require leg supports of the following sizes: Large foxes, No. 8 wire; olive baboon, No. 5 or 6; small kangaroo, No. 4 to 6; wolverine, No. 6; coyote, 1/4 inch rod; setter dog, 1/4 inch; peccary, 1/4 inch; great ant-eater, 1/4 inch; gray wolf, 5/16 inch; giant kangaroo, 3/8 inch for hind legs; harp seal, 3/8 inch.
Having made the legs complete, lay the skin upon its back, with the legs spread out, make the irons or wires cross each other as shown in the accompanying figure (Plate VI.), and then hew out a piece of tough wood of the general shape and proportion as that shown in the cut. Let this be as small as practicable to avoid splitting when the irons are stapled down upon it. Round off the corners and the ends, so that you can easily work all around this wooden backbone, when filling the animal. Now lay this piece of wood in the skin, upon the crossed leg irons, mark the points at which the irons need to pass through it, and bore holes accordingly, slanting each hole through the stick, for good reasons. The next step is to pass the irons through these holes (by bending them a little, and straightening them afterward) and when all are through, adjust the legs so that there is plenty of loose skin in the body, both in length and breadth. Remember that the stick is to be in the centre of the body, not the top. When the adjustment is complete, bend the end of each iron sharply down upon the stick, and staple it down with the utmost firmness.
Next pass one of your neck irons through the skull from back to front, boring a hole at the back for the purpose, so as to make the end of the iron pass out at the nasal cavity. Replace the missing flesh of the skull with tow or excelsior, bound down with thread, cover all with clay, poison the inside of the head and neck skin with arsenical soap, insert the skull in the head, and fasten the lower end of each neck iron firmly upon the centre stick.
The tail must now be made, but it is wise to fasten the tail iron so that it can be made to slip out or in, until it is known precisely how long it shall be, and then the end may be fastened securely with staples. Now bend up the legs into position, and give the animal its attitude. Procure your pedestal, or limb of a tree, and place the animal in attitude upon it; mark where the iron supports are to pass through, bore the necessary holes, and see if the animal will stand just as you wish it to. If not, work at its legs, and bore new holes until it does; then take it off, poison the inside of the skin liberally with strong arsenical soap, and proceed to stuff it with straw, or chopped tow, or excelsior if you prefer that, but I never do. For my own use I prefer soft straw, chopped fine.
Fill the neck first, using your wooden filler, then the body. If the body threatens to be too small, fill that first. Before going far, fill out the hind-quarters properly. Work on the body all over at the same time, and do not finish one-half of the animal before you have touched the other half, for this course would get you into endless trouble.
PLATE VI.
[a]Interior Mechanism of a Half-mounted Wolf.]
Having filled the body full, and shaped it the best you can, and sewn it up at all points save two,—a hole between the forelegs and one under the tail,—now put it in final position on its pedestal, and fasten it there. Having done this and surveyed the scene, you will observe that the form of the animal is very faulty, and the skin not nearly full enough. Something more must be done.
Unless the specimen is a seal, or something else with short, close hair, part the hair carefully and make a long, perpendicular slit in the skin behind each foreleg and in each flank, as shown in Plate III., I-I, and K-K. Through these openings you can introduce your metal filling tools, and also filling materials ad libitum, and give the interior a complete overhauling. You can easily push your iron filler through the straw, and raise the line of the back, shoulders, or hind-quarters, and lower the line of the breast and abdomen until both are right. Then, fill with more straw, or tow, if you like now. Through these holes you command the entire body of the animal at every point, and now you must work out your own salvation. When all is finished and the body is quite full and solid, sew up the openings carefully, and unite the hair over them so that they will be hidden. If you are careless in filling, and pull out a lot of hair around each of the openings, so much the worse for you.
For full instructions in regard to work on heads, see a special chapter.
[a]Fig. 30.]—Fillers of Various Kinds, One-sixth Actual Size. a, Filler of hard wood, 3 ft. long (another should be 2 ft. long); b, filler of steel, 5/16 inch x 3 ft. for long reaches in large mammals; c, filler of iron, 3/8 inch x 2-1/2 ft., for heavy work (another should be 18 in. long); d, filler of brass, or galvanized iron wire, No. 5, for light work (another should be still smaller, for very fine work).
Cutting out Pieces of Skin.—It not infrequently happens that in mounting an old skin it will be found to have been unduly stretched in drying, and in spite of one's best efforts there will be too much skin in a flank, or behind a shoulder, or that the body itself will be entirely too large. In such cases, when the animal is clothed with hair which can be made to hide the seams, it is necessary and permissible to cut a long slit in the skin where the looseness occurs, and cut out a strip so that when the edges are brought together the wrinkle no longer exists. Usually such cuts are made in the shape of a triangle running out to a very fine point, so that when the incision is sewn up the entire adjacent surface will be quite smooth.
When a taxidermist has a fresh skin, or one which has been but recently prepared dry, it is very seldom that any skin-cutting is necessary. With a good elastic skin there are ways of working away from any part a superabundance of skin, or forcing the skin on parts adjacent to the wrinkles to contract sufficiently to cause their disappearance.
On close-haired animals, wrinkles must be worked away, which can in a majority of cases be accomplished by hard, persevering work with the filler. With long-haired animals which have no stripes or spots, and on which the hair can be made to hide all seams, it is best to cut out triangular strips of skin. In the latter case it saves much time and hard labor. It certainly gives a better specimen, and if such tricks leave no visible trace upon the animal, where is the harm? I care not if a skin be slit in twenty places so long as the cuts are tightly sewn up, and are invisible to the eye of the observer.
Bird skins must never be cut in this way, for to the ornithologist who diligently studies every specimen, the presence of every feather and every bare spot naturally belonging to the bird is of importance. Do not forget this caution, unless you wish to call down upon your head the just wrath of the ornithologist. Neither is it possible to do any skin-cutting upon reptiles, for there is no natural covering to hide seams, and to cut out any scales is to mutilate a specimen.
Section II. Mounting Long-haired Mammals of Large Size, for which the Manikin is unnecessary.—Examples: Musk ox, bears (except large polars and grizzlies), yak, Bactrian camel in winter coat, llamas and their allies; also old, dry shins generally, which require forcible stretching.
While the manikin process is the one par excellence for the great majority of large quadrupeds, it is also, until you get perfectly familiar with it, the longest. There are various large animals whose long, thick, and matted hair so completely hides the surface of the wearer that a shorter method of mounting can be followed with very satisfactory results. This is simply stuffing with straw in the same manner as described in detail in the previous section, with but one exception—the manner of attaching the leg irons to the central beam of the body.
The leg irons are cut and fitted to the leg bones precisely as shown in Plate VII. But the legs are made with the skin attached at the foot, the skin is drawn over, fitted and sewn up, and each leg is completely finished while the skin lies in a heap upon the table. For a large animal this takes some time, and as fast as the legs are finished each must be carefully wrapped up in ice blankets that have been wet in salt-and-alum water, and kept soft until all are done. Oil the threads on the rods, to keep them from rusting.
The next step is to procure the centre board, which should be about one-third as wide, from top to bottom as the depth of the animal's body. In the illustration showing the manikin of a tiger (Plate VII.) the body board is wider than is desirable for the same animal were the body to be filled with straw. If the board is too wide, it is impossible to get around it with the fillers, and work through the specimen from one side to the other.
To put the members of the body together, lay the skin upon the floor on its back, in the same general shape as shown in Plate VI. Put the body board in place and mark the points where the ends of the leg irons strike it. Now for the iron squares.
The old and antiquated way to fasten leg irons to a centre board consisted in leaving a long end projecting, bending it like the letter U, and stapling it to the board. That was always a poor way, and in the light of a perfect arrangement it now seems poorer than ever.
When Mr. John Martens came over from Hamburg to work as a mammal taxidermist in Professor H.A. Ward's great Natural Science Establishment, at Rochester, N.Y., the most valuable luggage he brought with him was the idea of the iron square for attaching leg irons to a centre board. For that particular purpose it would be hard to devise a more perfect arrangement, and I shall be at some pains to describe it.
It requires four irons to fasten the legs to the centre board, one for each leg, and to make a set for an animal the size of a large mountain sheep ram, proceed as follows:
Procure four pieces of flat bar iron, 1/4 of an inch thick, 1-1/4 or 1-1/2 inch wide, and 9 inches long. At a point 3-1/2 inches from one end, bend each iron at a perfect right angle, which, of course, can only be done by heating it. Now heat the short arm red hot, clamp the end of it in a vise, and make a twist of exactly a quarter of a turn in the short arm, as close up to the angle as you can. This will make the end of the short arm stand out in a horizontal plane against the side of the body board.
At the end of the short arm, with its centre exactly 3 inches from the inner face of the long arm, drill or punch a hole of the right size to receive the threaded end of the leg iron, but no larger. (For our Ovis montana ram it should be half an inch in diameter.) File off the sharp corners of this end.
[a]Fig. 31.]—An Iron Square.
At a point about 1-1/4 inch from the inner angle of the square, and in the long arm, drill a hole about 7/16 or 1/2 an inch in diameter, for a stout bolt to pass through. Between that and the end of the long arm, drill (or punch) two screw-holes, and countersink them. That is all there is to the making of the square, and the accompanying cut (Fig. 31) accurately represents it. Each pair of squares is put on with a single square-headed bolt, the length of which varies according to the thickness of the body board. For our mountain ram, the bolts should be 3/8 of an inch in diameter, and about 2-1/2 inches long.
It is useless and unnecessary for me to attempt to describe the different sizes of squares necessary for animals of various sizes, for circumstances must be the instructor in that. I will remark, however, that for a large bison or moose, where the finished specimen will weigh perhaps 600 or 700 pounds, and the strain on the irons is very considerable, I have found it necessary to make squares of flat iron 3/8 or 7/16 of an inch thick by 1-3/4 inch wide.
Caution.—Do not make, the short, or outer arm, too long. If too long, and the hole once drilled, you will hardly be able to make it shorter; but if too short, it can easily be made longer by putting a piece of board between the long arm of the square and the body board. The length of the outer arm of the squares for the hind legs is gauged by the width of the pelvis. The measurement to be taken is the distance between the centres of the two femora when both are in their natural positions in the skeleton, and with this distance once ascertained it is easy to deduct the thickness of the centre board, and calculate how long each outer arm shall be. The distance between the heads of the two humeri is practically the same as the distance between the femora.
In making the hind leg, the iron should be no longer at the upper end than the end of the femur, and once this is determined the upper end of the femur must be cut off with a saw, to give room for the squares and two nuts. The end of the iron for the front leg may project three inches or so above the head of the humerus, and be bent slightly backward; to point upward in the same direction as the scapula.
Remember that at first the squares of the two pairs are set on exactly opposite each other, by means of the single bolt for each pair. Insert the upper end of each leg iron, screw the upper nut down firmly, then lift the half-made animal and stand it on its legs. Being free to move, the legs are very shaky, and you proceed at once to put them in position. You now adjust the legs according to your original design, bore holes in the rough pedestal for the lower ends of the rods to pass through, and shift and change the different members, now here, now there, until you are satisfied that the leg's are in precisely the right attitudes. If the leg that is stepping out in front is too short, run up the two nuts at the square, and thus make the leg an inch or two longer. Those that are too long are easily shortened by shifting their nuts lower down. You have such absolute control over the legs that you can shift and change them just as much as you please, and that very easily. If the whole animal is coupled too short or too long, it is but five minutes' work to take out a bolt, bore another hole, and shift the forelegs farther forward or back. When everything is perfectly to your liking, tighten up every nut to its very tightest, and insert screws through the screw-holes that have been provided in the long arm of each square. Each leg is now a fixture.
The great beauty of this method, which appears to its greatest perfection in the construction of a manikin, lies in the fact that you have, from first to last, the most perfect control over the different parts of the entire animal. When you discover as you proceed that something is wrong, it is an easy matter to change it, provided the skin has not been put on the manikin.
In putting together an animal with the legs in the skin, you are necessarily troubled somewhat by the skin of the body, which hinders the turning of your wrench, etc.; but all such difficulties exist only to be overcome.
Put the neck irons through the skull, and fasten the inner end of each to the body board, as shown in the tiger manikin, or in any other solid way you prefer. As to the tail, ditto, and when the attitude is perfect, and all parts fastened together, then, and not until then, anoint the inside of the skin with arsenical soap, all that it will hold, and give it time to be absorbed. Put the head in position by bending the neck irons, place the feet in position, and tighten the nuts under the pedestal. Now turn the animal upside down, put a rope under each end of the pedestal, and hang the whole affair up to the ceiling, or to a beam, by means of the ropes, so that it will swing clear of the floor.
Next sew up the skin of the abdomen and breast, and proceed to fill the neck, shoulders, and hind-quarters with soft straw. Oat straw is the best, if you can get it. If you can procure no soft straw, then have a boy take your wheat straw, bunch by bunch, and with a mallet pound it upon a block to crush it and make it soft. In filling the animal, the first thing to do is to fill it out at all points, loosely at first, to get the general proportions. The skin should not touch your iron squares or the body board at any point, for if it does, something is wrong. At first you will work with your large wooden fillers, but as the straw gets packed, and the wooden tool will not go through it, take your iron fillers. No matter how hard straw may be packed, with a burrowing, twisting motion you can force that wedge-pointed instrument through the straw so as to reach any point that needs more filling out.
Be careful about the line of the back, and keep it exactly in place, along the centre of the body, and always at the highest point. Do not let the back line of a feline animal, especially a tiger or a leopard, get down upon one side, as will be sure to happen if you are not watchful. When the outline of the back is fixed, then fill out the breast and abdomen, and get the lower line of the body just as it should be. As you proceed with all this, keep sewing up the skin from time to time until only two holes remain, one at the breast and one between the hind legs well back. Now take the animal down, stand it upon the floor, cut slits in the sides, as directed in the previous section, and through them finish the filling and shaping of the body.
All this takes work, hard work, intelligent work, and a great deal of it. Make the body hard and firm, and as smooth on the outside as Nature does. To secure smoothness, and to lower the unnatural knobs that are sure to appear, beat the animal from time to time with a flat club. When all is done, fill in the last bit of straw at the various holes, sew them up strongly but neatly with stout linen twine, or "gilling thread," well waxed, and dress the fur. This will be treated elsewhere in a separate section, as also will the treatment of the head.
[CHAPTER XVII.]
MOUNTING LARGE MAMMALS: THE CONSTRUCTION OF
MANIKINS.
Section III. Short-haired or Hairless Mammals, and Others of Great Size.—Examples: Lion, tiger, zebra, horse, giraffe, bison and buffalo, camel, all deer and antelopes; elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, tapir, etc.
Of the numerous processes described in this work there are two which I must mention as being distinctively and particularly my own. One is the general use of clay as a filling material, and the other is the evolution and development of the clay-covered manikin, on the principles now to be described and illustrated. Already this method of mounting quadrupeds has been quite generally adopted by the new school of American taxidermists, and I think it is destined to fill our museums with more perfect mounted mammals than the rest of the world can show. I have always willingly taught the advantages of the clay-covered manikin, and the various processes involved in its construction, to every enterprising taxidermist who desired to learn it, and it was my intention to have published a full description of it years ago. Now it comes as a sort of "farewell performance," and "positively the last appearance."
Among taxidermists, the term manikin is applied to the made up figure of an animal over which a skin is to be adjusted, and made to counterfeit the actual form and size of a living animal. While it is well adapted to the successful treatment of mammals, reptiles, and fishes in general, it is impossible to employ it in mounting bird skins unless they are very badly torn, and require to be put together a piece at a time, or else are of the very largest size. The worst torn and mutilated bird skin can be put together on a manikin with perfect success, provided the skin is all present.
Speaking from my own experience, I must say that my clay-covered manikin process seems to possess important and undisputed advantages over all other methods I have ever seen employed or described for the mounting of not only the most difficult mammalian subjects, but also reptiles of many kinds, and fishes. By it the most perfect results attainable by the taxidermic art are not only possible, but may be achieved without even a risk of failure save through lack of anatomical knowledge. Nearly all the mechanical difficulties which beset the other methods are eliminated, and the result becomes chiefly a question of knowledge and artistic sense. By this method, I have successfully mounted such mammals as the following: Elephant,[9] American bison, polar bear, zebra, tiger, puma, elephant seal, hairless Mexican dog, etc. The last-named specimen was in competition against the elephant in a competitive exhibition, and I learned afterward from the judges that it came near wresting the grand prize from its lordly competitor. This fact is mentioned to show that the process was equally successful in the treatment of a thick-hided elephant and a small dog with a skin as thin as writing-paper, and utterly destitute of hair. A plaster cast of the unskinned body of the dog was exhibited with the mounted specimen, to enable the observer to judge of the success of the process.
The unchallenged superiority of the clay-covered manikin process is due to the following reasons:
1. The absolute control the operator is able to exercise over the form of his subject from first to last, without prejudice to the safety of the skin to be mounted.
2. The possibility of working out anatomical details which it is useless to attempt by other methods.
3. The absolute permanency of the form produced.
4. The ability of the operator to place his subjects in attitudes so difficult that by ordinary methods they would be unattainable.
5. The most perfect preservation of the skin and its covering from damage by excessive handling, beating, and wetting.
6. The absolute perfection of form and attitude which is attainable by this method only.
Until you have fully learned the principles of manikin-making, do not attempt to mount by this process a skin that has come to you with no measurements nor leg bones. Choose for your first attempt a good-sized dog or sheep, or some quadruped of similar size which you have in the flesh, and from which you can take a full series of outlines, measurements, casts, etc. I can probably teach you as well as any living man how to proceed when you have no measurements whatever, and will give you a few hints presently; but now I say, you must have your first subject in the flesh. It is then within your power to secure to yourself all possible advantages in what you are about to do.
It is desirable to take the usual measurements before the skin is removed, but by all means make another series of the skinned body and limbs. In skinning, disjoint the leg bones at the carpal joint,[10] which leaves only the bones of the foot attached to the skin. When the skin is put on for the last time, this joint must be re-articulated with two wires. When the skin is out of the way, you can take the length of the body from the back part of the thigh to the point of the shoulder; the distance between elbow and knee, from the elbow to the top of the shoulder; the circumference and diameter of the body, neck, and limbs, at various points; the depth of the body, etc. You can also measure from the highest point of the head of the femur to a similar point on the humerus, and when the hind legs have been cut off, you can easily determine the proper length for your iron squares by measuring between the two hip sockets (os inominata). Observe, now, if you never did before, that the front edges of the tibia and the ulna have no flesh whatever upon them, nor has the angle of the elbow, the knee-cap, nor the front of the metacarpal bones.
Save the bones of each leg complete, and without any farther disjointing; but, of course, the flesh must be carefully trimmed and scraped away. Save the skull, of course, and it will be a great help if you will hastily "rough out" the bones of the entire body and save them for reference until the manikin is complete. The pelvis and the thorax will help you greatly by and by. We will now assume that we are ready to proceed with the manikin, which we will follow out by successive steps.
PLATE VII. [a]Manikin for Tiger.—First Stage.]
1. The first thing to do is to cut a deep groove in the bones of the heel, close alongside the base of the calcaneum, also in the bones of the foot at the joints, and in the head of the humerus from the back, so that the iron can fit in snugly, and not create a great, awkward, rounded hump at each of those joints. In a hoofed animal, the centre of the hoof must be cut out so that the iron can pass through it quite out of sight where it enters the pedestal. The lower joints of the foreleg must be channelled out in the same way. Study the shape of each joint and you will then see precisely what is needed. In cutting out these grooves, I use a saw for certain bones, and gouges and stone-mason's chisels for others, according to circumstances. Remember that between the tendon of Achilles and the lower end of the tibia there is always a deep hollow, where the skin of the two sides actually comes together. Keep your leg iron out of that hollow at all hazards,—and this can be done only by sinking the iron into the tibia.
2. If you have an outline of the animal's body, lay it upon the floor, and draw a straight line to represent the top of your pedestal. If you have no sketches, then you must draw an outline in chalk upon the floor, choosing a certain crack as the line of the pedestal. Now lay down the skeleton of each leg in its own place, in the position the leg is to have in the finished animal. Measure the height of the missing bones of the foot, and leave a space accordingly above the top of your assumed pedestal. It is highly important these leg bones should each have the right attitude.
3. Take four straight No. 6 wires, and with the first leg laid out carefully in position, bend the wire to fit the back of the leg bones very exactly, cut it off the right length, and so make an exact pattern for the leg rod. Remember to allow for its going through a good thick pedestal, and having about two inches to spare underneath for a nut and washer. The rod for the foreleg may project above the upper end of the humerus one-third to one-half the length of that bone, but the rod for the hind leg must not be the least bit longer than the upper end of the femur. Remember also to bury the iron well in the centre of the lowest joint of the leg and the foot, so that it will not be seen when the animal is finished. In order to show the bends that are necessary in the leg irons of a ruminant, I have taken the trouble to photograph and reproduce herewith (Fig. 32) the identical leg irons which now support the huge bull buffalo in the National Museum group, the manikin of which is also shown in this chapter. Before bending, the irons for the forelegs were each 4 feet 1/2 inch in length, and those for the hind legs were 4 feet 6-1/2 inches; diameter, 5/8 inch.
[a]Fig. 32.]—Leg Irons of an American Bison.
4. Having made your four patterns exact in length and bend, cut four leg irons to match, from round rods of Norway iron, or best American, if Norway cannot be procured. I can give you no fixed rule by which to determine the size that leg irons should be, but I can at least mention the sizes I use in certain animals:
Adult moose, male or female, and giraffe, 3/4 inch.
Bull bison, cow bison, horse, 5/8 inch.
Male caribou, black-tail deer, and large mountain sheep, 1/2 inch.
Male Virginia deer, antelope, tiger, 7/16 inch.
All these sizes, except the two largest, can be bent cold in a strong vise.
5. Having bent the irons to match the patterns, and to fit the bones also, cut a long thread on each end of each rod, and fit two large hexagonal nuts on each end so that they turn readily, but not loosely.
6. With soft but strong twine, or annealed wire, bind each leg iron firmly to the leg bones from top to bottom. You may now take a saw and cut off the upper third of the femur.
7. During the course of the foregoing work, you have had a blacksmith at work making your four iron squares (see previous chapter) according to a hoop-iron pattern furnished by you, and now they are ready to use in attaching the leg irons.
8. Now comes the question of a centre board for the body. If the animal is a dog, a small deer or antelope, a tiger, or anything so small that you can reach around its body with your arms, make the body board as narrow as you please, or as wide as the entire depth of the animal's body, if you choose. I think it better to make it similar in proportions to that shown in the accompanying illustration (Plate VII.) of the first stage of a tiger manikin, in order that with a long needle one can sew through the body from side to side. It is well, for the same reason, to cut a hole in the board, as shown, at a point opposite the iliac region. I mounted this tiger with a decided curve in the middle of his body, which obliged me to cut the centre board in two, and unite the two parts again at an angle by means of two bent pieces of iron screwed on either side. In most animals, however, this is unnecessary. The centre board need not be over 7/8 of an inch in thickness in any save very large animals, when it is best to have it 1-1/2 inch, or nearly that. It is best to use dry white pine, because it is light and works easily.
9. Lay the body board on your chalk outline, lay the iron legs in position, put the squares down and mark the place where the bolt for each pair should pass through. Bore the holes, bolt on the squares quite firmly (but leave the screws out as yet), then insert the leg rods, and tighten the nuts. Set the legs on as nearly right as possible while the skeleton form lies on the floor, then stand it up, put it on a rough pedestal, and see how it looks. Now comes the crucial test of your knowledge and artistic sense. A number of things are wrong, and the shaky skeleton of the manikin "don't look right."
What is the matter? Is one of the front legs bent forward at the carpal joint? Then straighten it. Is the animal coupled too short? Then move one pair of legs a trifle on the centre board, to increase the length of the body. Do not the legs walk naturally? Then make them. Are the forelegs, and hind legs also, too close together? Then your squares are too short, and they must be lengthened by placing a bit of board under each one, as seen under the hind-leg square of the tiger manikin.
You will probably need to shift the feet on the pedestal also, by boring new holes. You can make any leg longer or shorter, make the stride shorter or longer, and, in fact, make any change that your eye, or your picture or cast tells you is necessary. The vital necessity is that your eye must be so trained and educated that it detects a fault instantly, no matter how slight, and sees what is required to remedy it. The eye of a successful taxidermist must be educated just as thoroughly as the hand of a pianist.
For a large animal, it is, for me, several hours' work to attach the legs to the body board, and make the changes necessary to bring everything into perfect position. The last thing is to take the cleaned skin out of the bath, throw it over the skeleton manikin, and see how it fits. If, when it is adjusted, the feet do not touch the pedestal, you know that the manikin is too high, and you must either cut down the top of the centre board with a draw-shave, or else lower it by attaching the squares nearer the top. In this trial the feet should stand loosely upon the floor.
Having got everything finally adjusted, put the screws in the squares, tighten up all nuts, and put a washer under each nut that strikes the pedestal, both above and below, and make all secure. There must be no looseness, or the manikin will lean over immediately. The centre board should stand exactly perpendicular. Test it with a plumb-line, and see if it does so. Is the manikin now so secure that you can sit upon it without racking it? If not, it should be. To test the manikin for my big buffalo, shown in this chapter, I climbed upon it, and stood with my full weight, first on the outer end of one iron square, then on another, and to test the strength of the neck irons I put a large anvil on the top of the skull without making the slightest permanent impression on the irons.
10. It is unnecessary to speak further of the irons for the head and tail, and their attachment. See figures.
11. Next comes the making of the legs. The lower joints, where there is scarcely any flesh, had best be made of clean, long-fibre tow. Where the thick muscles lie, bunch up some tow, put it where the muscle was, and bind on with thread or twine. Continue this process until this muscle has been built up to its proper size, and wrapped at all points until it is smooth, firm, and properly shaped. Higher up, where the muscles are thicker and lie in larger masses, use excelsior in precisely the same way. Little by little, but with much excelsior and twine, the muscles are gradually built up. Leave the bones bare at the points where nature does. The hind leg must have its tendon of Achilles before it can be finished. To make this, drill a hole through the end of the calcaneum, or heel bone; pass a long wire through for half its length, twist the two halves tightly together until they will reach half-way up the thigh, then wrap tow around the twisted wire from the heel bone up, making the tendon larger as you proceed. Presently you are ready to merge it into the flesh of the leg so that its upper end disappears.
To give form to a leg, and bring out the prominent muscles, take a very long needle and a very long piece of twine, and sew through and through the leg on certain lines, putting on pressure to produce certain depressions that exist between the larger muscles. To give detailed directions on this point would oblige me to go into the subject of musculation at great and tiresome length, and since this is not a work on anatomy, I will not attempt a dissertation on the form of each genera of the mammalia. The illustrations of the tiger and bison manikins show the form of the external muscles of Felis tigris and Bison americanus, and what is possible in a manikin.
Making the Body of a Manikin.—The centre board of a large mammal, like the bison, moose, and all such animals, should accurately represent a section through the centre of the body from top to bottom. In the absence of measurements and living models, the closest approximation to the desired form is obtained by laying the skin upon the floor, hair inside, and folding it loosely upon itself so as to get what looks like the general shape of the animal, and then taking the outline thus obtained.
A very large manikin may be made hollow in the manner represented in the accompanying plate (Plate IX.), which is self-explanatory. This is often desirable to avoid making the figure too heavy, as would be the case were the entire bulk to be made a solid mass of excelsior. For the smaller buffaloes, I made the bodies of excelsior alone. Each side was built up separately by driving a row of nails along the top of the centre board, and another along the bottom to carry the twine over in binding on the layers of excelsior. At the last, these nails were driven home.
During all this process the skin has been tried on the manikin from time to time, to make sure that the structure is of the right size in every respect. Beginners nearly always make a manikin too large, especially in circumference.
It is the commonest trick in the world for legs and necks to be made so large they have to be reduced. If a skin does not fit when it is tried on, the manikin is generally to blame, though sometimes the skin is badly shrunken, and requires to be further thinned down to make it more elastic. It is easy enough to make a manikin larger or higher, especially on the hind quarters, even while the skin is being put on for the last time; but woe to him whose manikin is too large at the last moment. That means serious delay.
When the manikin is finished at every point, shear it all over with a large pair of shears to clip off the ends of the wisps of excelsior, and then poison the skin thoroughly on the inside with arsenical soap, and on the outside with arsenic water, if the hair be long. While the poison is being absorbed, mix up enough clay to cover the entire animal with a coat an eighth or a quarter of an inch thick, and smear it on with the hand. Have it soft and pasty, so that it will rub into the excelsior, and catch hold of it. If the clay is too stiff, it will neither spread nor stick.
PLATE VIII.
[a]Manikin for Tiger.—Completed.]
When the manikin has been fully covered with clay from end of nose to tip of tail, not a single inch of surface having been missed, you then have a complete clay statue of the animal, except the feet. Now put the skin over and adjust it carefully. Leave no air-bubbles under it. Catch it together between the fore legs, hind legs, under the belly, the throat and neck, and around the legs, and make it fit everywhere. Then begin at the feet and sew it up with short, strong stitches in the manner already described, shaping and filling out wherever necessary, as you go. On a large mammal it is very desirable for two persons to work at the same time, to keep the skin from drying up prematurely. Of course, the skin must be kept wrapped up in wet cloths until finished. Finish all the legs first, and then the body. You can actually model the skin down upon the body, and it will not only take the exact form of the manikin—every depression and every elevation—but it will also keep it. If there is too much skin on one side of the animal, work it together with your hand, and coax it to shrink until the superfluous skin is distributed over the animal, and finally disappears. Once, when mounting the skin of a Burchell's zebra in a peculiar attitude (at bay), I found that, owing to its elasticity, there was a superabundance of about ten inches of skin in front of the left hind leg, which was placed very far forward, under the body. But for the saving grace of a clay-covered manikin I should have been in a fix. As it was, I started in half-way up the neck, to work together and stow away the surplus skin from that point backward, and by the time I reached the seat of the difficulty (at the flank) the surplus skin was all taken up, and the side of the animal was as smooth and immaculate as if nothing had happened.
There is supreme pleasure in crowning a well-made manikin with a handsome skin, and seeing a specimen take on perfect form and permanent beauty as if by magic. It is then that you begin to be proud of your work; and finally you revel in it. You say to yourself, "This is art!"—and so it is,—but let your work speak for itself.
The head is the last thing to be finished, and this feature of the work will be treated in detail in another chapter.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
FINISHING MOUNTED MAMMALS.
Drying and Shrinking.—After the actual mounting of a mammal is finished, the specimen should be put aside in a separate room, away from the dust, and allowed to stand for from three or four weeks to three or four months, according to its size. It must have time to dry thoroughly, and shrink as much as it will. Every specimen is bound to shrink in drying, and it is better for this to occur before it leaves the workroom, and before the finishing touches are put on, rather than after it goes on exhibition, and is practically beyond your reach.
In shrinking, all the seams open, more or less; the eyelids draw away a trifle from the glass eye; usually the lips open somewhat; and in ruminants the inner skin of the ear often draws straight across the inside.
Cleaning Up a Specimen.—In finishing a specimen, the first thing is to dig the clay and tow out of all open seams, cracks, and small holes, preparatory to filling them with papier-maché. With the sharp point of a pointed bone-scraper, dig out the clay, or whatever filling material is in sight, very thoroughly, so as to give the papier-maché a chance to enter deeply and catch firmly underneath the edges of the skin. With a stiff brush, brush out the seams and openings, so that no clay-dust remains, for there is nothing so good as clay-dust to prevent papier-maché from sticking to a skin. It is often well to use a bellows in getting dirt out of holes and seams.
Beat the dust out of the hair, or blow it out with the hand bellows, or brush it out, or wash it out if necessary, any way to get it out. If the hair has been poisoned with arsenic water, do as little to it as possible in getting out the accumulated dust, for too vigorous treatment will bring out the arsenic with the dust, and send it into your lungs.
If, however, the hair has not yet been poisoned, as soon as the cleaning is finished lay the animal upon its back, or on its side, and pour into the hair, so that it will run immediately down to the roots, a solution of alcohol, water, and corrosive sublimate made as follows: If you wish to make four gallons of the solution, take two gallons of ninety-five per cent alcohol, dissolve in it all the corrosive sublimate it will take up, making what chemists call a "saturated solution." In this there will always be a little of the sublimate left on the bottom of the jar. This is, of course, too strong to use thus, under any circumstances. Carefully pour off the clear liquid so as to leave the sediment remaining in the jar, and then dilute the former with an equal quantity of water, which thus yields the desired four gallons. It is most effectually applied by pouring it from a small watering-pot, with the sprinkler off the spout, into the hair, so that it will fill it and cover the skin without being wasted. The corrosive sublimate is deposited at the roots of the hair, and also on the hair, in quantity sufficient to prevent the ravages of insects, but not to be injurious to the health of the taxidermist. Strong arsenic water may be used for this purpose,[** pupose] instead of the other solution, if preferred. In case the solution used should leave a gray deposit on the hair, it should be sponged off with a little warm water.
Papier-Maché.—How to Make and Use It.—Every taxidermist must know how to make good papier-maché before his education can be considered complete. This material is absolutely indispensable in taxidermic work, and its composition should be thoroughly understood. It is used in filling up holes, seams, and cracks, in modeling the mouth parts of specimens that have been mounted with the mouth open, in restoring missing parts of various specimens, in modeling bones to go in "restored" skeletons, etc. It is also of great value in modeling groundwork to be made in imitation of rock or wood. There is really no good substitute for this material. When properly made it sticks tightly to its place, is easily modeled, can be crowded into the smallest crack, dries quickly when exposed to the air, is hard and smooth when dry, takes paint readily, and yet when kept wrapped in a wet cloth under an inverted bowl can be kept soft for several days.
There are several ways of making papier-maché, according to the use to which it is to be put. I have taken pains to prepare an exact formula for making the finest and best quality, and from that the worker will undoubtedly be able to work out variations in quality, according to his needs.
The most important ingredient is the paper pulp. The finest pulp for papier-maché is that made by the ton in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, from mutilated paper currency, but not from tobacco stamps, which is coarse and not fit for fine work. A hundred pounds of this pulp would cost, in Washington, about $1.50, and could be made into sheets of small bulk, and dried for use as needed. It is a great advantage to have it in this form. When needed for use, take a dry sheet or ball of the right size, dissolve and beat it up into a thin mush in a bowl of water, until the particles are all well separated, then pour it on a sieve to run the water out without losing the pulp. The water is then squeezed out of it by gentle pressure with the hand, but it should not, by any means, be squeezed as dry as possible, for the water is an important factor. Pulp prepared thus can be stirred up with glue into a perfectly homogeneous paste, free from all lumps, and so fine it can be pressed into the smallest crack.
If you have no manufactured pulp, then you must make it yourself. Procure a lot of old newspapers, of as soft paper as possible, tear them to bits, put the pieces in a kettle of boiling water and beat the mass in any way you please, boiling it meanwhile, until it becomes paper pulp. It should be free from lumps and small pieces of paper, or it will not work well.
The following are the ingredients necessary to make a lump of papier-maché a little larger than an ordinary base-ball, and weighing 17 ounces.
Fine Papier-Maché.
| Wet paper pulp, | { dry paper, 1 ounce | } | 4 ounces (avoirdupois). | |
| { water, 3 ounces | } | |||
| Dry plaster Paris, | 8 ounces | " | ||
| Hot glue, | ½ gill, or 4-1/2 tablespoonfuls. |
While the paper pulp is being prepared, melt some best Irish glue in the gluepot, and make it of the same thickness and general consistency as that used by cabinet-makers. Measure the different ingredients to be used, until the result teaches you what good papier-maché is like, and after that you can be guided by your judgment as you proceed. On taking the paper pulp from the water, give it a gentle squeeze, but by no means squeeze it as dry as you can. Now put it in a bowl, put over it about three tablespoonfuls of your hot glue, and stir the mass up into a soft and very sticky paste. Next add your plaster Paris, and mix it thoroughly. By the time you have used about three ounces of the plaster, the mass is so dry and thick you can hardly work it. Now add the remainder of your glue, work it up again until it becomes sticky once more, then add the remainder of your plaster. Squeeze it vigorously through your fingers to thoroughly mix the mass, and work it until it is free from lumps, is finely kneaded, and is sticky enough to stick fast to the surface of a planed board when you rub a bit on it by firm pressure of the finger. If it is too dry to stick fast, add a few drops of either glue or water, it makes little difference which, and work it up again. When the paper pulp is poor, and the maché is inclined to be lumpy, lay the mass upon a smooth board, take a hammer and pound it hard to grind it up fine.
PLATE IX.
[a]Manikin for Male American Bison.—Half Completed.]
If the papier-maché is not sticky enough to stick fast to whatever a bit of it is rubbed upon, it is a failure, and requires more glue. In using it the mass should be kept in a lump, and used as soon as possible after it is made. Keep the surface of the lump moist by means of a wet cloth laid over it, for if you do not, the surface will dry rapidly. If you wish to keep it over night, or longer, wrap it up in several thicknesses of wet cotton cloth, and put it under an inverted bowl. If it should by accident or delay become a trifle too stiff to work well, add a few drops of water to the mass, pound it with the hammer, and work it over again. If you wish to keep a lump for a week, to use daily, add a few drops of glycerine when you make it, so that it will dry more slowly.
The papier-maché made when the above formula was prepared had the following qualities: When tested by rubbing between the thumb and finger, it was sticky and covered the thumb with a thin coating. (Had it left the thumb clean, it would have been because it contained too much water.) When rubbed upon a pane of glass, it stuck tightly and dried hard in three hours, without cracking, and could only be removed with a knife. When spread in a layer, as thin as writing-paper, it dried in half an hour. A mass actually used dried hard enough to coat with wax in eighteen hours, and, without cracking, became as hard as wood; yet a similar quantity wrapped in a wet cloth and placed under an inverted bowl kept soft and fit for use for an entire week.
Such are the qualities of first-class papier-maché, and the manner of producing them all. I have dwelt at great length on this material because it is such an important and indispensable factor in general taxidermic work. It will pay any taxidermist to become an expert in making it and using it, and a little later, when we get to modeling intricate mouth parts, and making all sorts of restorations and repairs, we shall see what a valuable servant is papier-maché.
"Machéing" Mounted Mammals.—Surely it is unnecessary for me to devote much space to directing how to fill up with papier-maché the holes, seams, and cracks in a mounted mammal. Of course all cavities opened by shrinkage or accident must be filled up. Use a sharp-pointed knife, press the fine and soft maché deeply into every opening, make it catch underneath the skin, so that when dry it cannot flake off, or be knocked off; and smooth it on the outside to the level of the skin. Use the maché liberally, and it will be more certain always to remain as you leave it. Fill up rough seams until they are smooth, so that the hair can be glued on if necessary. Wherever dry clay shows, dig it out and replace with the other more durable material, which can be painted, whereas dry clay can not.
Putty.—In the days of my youth I was taught by my European teachers to use putty for all such work as that described above; but I very soon became disgusted with it, and years ago ceased to use it for any purpose whatever. It is greasy, inert, and yet purely temporary stuff. It never gets really hard unless used in a great mass, and when used in small quantities for fine work it is utterly worthless. Do not use it unless you are so situated that you are positively unable to make papier-maché—and I cannot imagine any such situation as being possible within the pale of civilization.
Painting on Papier-Maché.—Of course this material dries white, and must be painted. If paint is put directly upon it, the oil and color is absorbed at once, and it takes many coats to properly fill it up. To save time and give the best results, first give your papier-maché work two coats of shellac, which dries in a few minutes and fills up all the pores, so that your paint will stay as you put it on. Use oil colors, but put them on with turpentine to avoid the unnatural gloss that oil will give. In another chapter (XXVI.) will be found detailed hints in regard to painting mounted specimens.
Gluing Hair upon Mammals.—It is very seldom that a dry skin is mounted without there being upon it some spot or spots destitute of hair, which must be repaired. Sometimes it is only a small spot, sometimes it is nearly the entire head, or an entire leg from which the epidermis has come loose, carrying the hair with it, and leaving an unsightly bare spot. It requires a good deal of ingenuity, much skill, and tireless patience to glue hair upon an animal so that it will so closely resemble the natural growth that no one will notice the difference. But in every case, except some of the seals and sea-lions, this can be accomplished, if it be necessary, although very often it requires good judgment and the hand of an artist to do it.
Each mammal has its own peculiarities in regard to the quality, thickness, length, and general set of its hair, all of which must be carefully studied. When the hair grows long and thickly, the task is much easier than if it be thin or short.
1st. Procure a pair of very small curve-pointed forceps, so fine they will hold a single hair if necessary. (Price, 75 cents.)
2d. Procure a pair of small and sharp scissors, with sharp points.
3d. Procure a bottle of common fish-glue, or royal glue.
4th. If possible, procure a piece of useless skin, from which to cut the hair necessary to use in making the repairs.
Very often it is impossible to procure any pieces of skin with hair suitable for the purpose, and then the only way is to cut hair from the specimen which is to be repaired, picking out with the forceps a tiny bunch here and there in such a way that the bunches cut out will not show. This can nearly always be done in making slight repairs upon thick-haired animals, such as bears, wolves, monkeys, etc. But with such short-haired animals as the tiger, zebra, and giraffe, the hair must be procured elsewhere. Use the hair of any animal to repair the coat of another, so long as it will answer perfectly, no matter what the genus or species may be. Use tow, or jute, painted or dyed the proper color, if it is sufficiently like the hair which will surround it.
In order to treat this subject intelligibly, we will undertake to separate all terrestrial mammals into three classes, as follows:
1st. Animals with very close, short hair; as the tiger, zebra, horse, and giraffe.
Upon such animals as the above, the hair lies almost flat upon the skin, completely covering it with a very smooth, glossy coat. To repair hair upon such animals, procure pieces of skin having hair of the requisite quality, and soak them in clear water until decomposition sets in, and the hair easily comes out by the roots. The hair must not be cut off, or it will not answer. Be sure that your fish-glue is good and strong, and about as thick as castor-oil. Clean the bare surface of the skin by scraping it with a knife to remove all dirt, and give the glue a chance to take hold. With your small forceps, pull from the pieces of half-macerated skin a small bunch of hair of the proper tint, and with a small camel's-hair brush apply a drop of glue to the roots of the hair. Begin at the side of the bare spot where the hair grows directly away from it, and lay down your little bunch of hairs so that their tips shall fairly cover the roots of those nearest the edge. Then press down the bunch of hair thus placed in position, work the hairs slightly apart, and make them lie quite flat upon the skin. Follow up this process with untiring patience, and the result will be entirely satisfactory. I have seen large patches of hair glued upon a tiger so successfully that when finished the sharpest eye could not detect the repaired spots. But it was very slow work, requiring an hour's steady work to cover a spot of not quite two square inches.
2d. Animals with thick, long hair; as most monkeys, bears, wolves, all the ruminants of cold climates, etc.
PLATE X.
[a]Manikin for American Bison.—Completed.]
In repairing the coats of such as the above, the necessary hair may be cut off in bunches, either from the animal itself, or from old pieces of skin, so long as the hair is of the proper length. Notice carefully the set of the hair, and imitate it very exactly. The glue may be applied quite plentifully to the roots of each bunch of hairs while you hold it in your forceps, and usually quite a large bunch may be set on at a time, and afterward spread out a little. In repairing the mountain sheep (Ovis montana) and prong-horn antelope (Antilocapra americana), the point of vital importance is to get every hair to set in precisely the right direction, so that the surface will be smooth. If the hair is put on carelessly, and without due observance of the above caution, upon the repaired spot it will stick stiffly out like the bristles of a shoe-brush, and the imperfection of the coat will be painfully apparent.
3d. Animals with long hair growing very thinly; as upon certain portions of orang utans, chimpanzees, and all members of the hog family.
Upon the animals indicated above, it will be found that the hair grows in little bunches of three or four hairs in a bunch, but so thinly distributed that the skin shows through quite distinctly.
Furthermore, in such cases the hairs stand out from the skin, and their roots are plainly visible. Successfully to repair such a skin is very slow, tedious work, and cannot be done by a man whose time is very valuable. A boy working for small wages is the best means to employ, but he must be watched closely.
Procure the hair necessary for making the repairs. Then with a sharp awl, or coarse needle, prick the skin full of holes to correspond in number and distribution with the arrangement of the tiny hair bunches upon the skin surrounding the spot. Prick the little holes rather deeply and slanting in the right direction. Then take a bunch of three or four hairs in your smallest forceps, dip the end in the fish-glue, and keeping the hairs well together, set the bunch into one of the little holes. See that the hairs stand out in the right direction, and proceed in this way until the bare spot is covered.
[CHAPTER XIX.]
MOUNTING MAMMAL HEADS AS TROPHIES AND ORNAMENTS.
Sportsmen, if you really must kill all the large mammalia from off the face of the earth, do at least preserve the heads that are brought low by your skill and prowess. Now that our elk, moose, deer, caribou, antelope, mountain sheep, and mountain goat are all disappearing so rapidly, and nearly all these species are doomed to speedy extermination, head collecting has become quite the fashion. There are in this country probably two score of taxidermists who live by heads alone; and many hunters who once lived by buffalo robes and beaver pelts now make a business of hunting for heads to sell. I know many such, and their scale of prices for heads, according to size and "points," shows that they have got the business "down fine."
And why should not heads be collected and made much of, as well as pelts and meat? A naturally handsome mammal head which has been skilfully mounted is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Wearied with the survey of inane and meaningless pictures, stiff portraits, cheap statuettes, and tawdry fancy decorations, the eye rests gladly and gratefully upon a fine head on a handsome shield, hanging in a good light, and blesses the hand that placed it there. Such an ornament calls forth endless admiration and query, even from those who know no other chase than that of the mighty dollar, and who, alas! have never found out by experience that
"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods."
And therefore I say, if you must go and kill things, save their heads and mount them as an atonement for your deeds of blood. They will give pleasure to you and your friends long after you have hung up your rifle forever. I have gathered numerous curiosities and works of art in foreign lands, but they do not excite one-half the admiration that is called forth by the series of really fine heads of buffalo, deer, mountain sheep, elk, antelope, and mountain goat of which I am the fortunate possessor.
Inasmuch as this chapter is intended chiefly for the benefit of sportsmen and amateur taxidermists, we must begin at the beginning, and treat the subject in somewhat full detail. We will consider that we have a deer as our subject.
Many a fine deer head is spoiled forever by being cut off too close behind the ears. With such animals as the lion, tiger, leopard, puma, and bear, a long neck is not desirable unless the head is to be mounted in a glass case, looking out of a thicket; and neither is it best for a buffalo head to have a long neck. It may be set down as a safe rule, however, that the heads of all deer, antelopes, sheep, goats, and the like, should have moderately long necks. Having experimented fully with necks of all lengths, I find that the most satisfactory to competent critics, and therefore the handsomest, are those which strike a happy medium, such as the antelope head shown in Plate XI. To secure this length, the head should be cut off well back toward the shoulders, so as to leave a little surplus to be trimmed off when the head is mounted.
To Skin and Preserve a Deer Head, proceed as follows:
1. Start at the back of the neck (on top) just in front of the shoulders, or "withers," keep the point of the knife under the skin, with the edge up, and divide the skin in a circle all the way around the neck, keeping down to the point where the neck sets on the shoulders. You need not cut through the flesh and bone of the neck at that point.
2. Never slit the skin open along the under side of the throat. Cut it open in a straight line along the back of the neck, all the way along, up to a point midway between the ears. From that point run two cuts like the arms of a Y, one to the base of each antler or horn, as seen in Fig. 7. Run the point of the knife close around the base of each antler, and cut through the skin all the way.
3. Begin at the back of the neck, and skin downward on each side until the entire neck is free. As you proceed you will presently come to the ear, which stands up like a tree-trunk covered with bark. Cut the ear off close to the skull, leave it for the present just as it is, and go right on down toward the cheeks and throat, as far as you can go.
4. Begin next at the angle of the Y, on the top of the head, and skin down between the antlers and over the forehead until you reach the eye. Now proceed carefully. In many ruminants there is a deep cavity in the bone directly in front of the anterior corner of the eye, called an "eye-pit." The skin lines this eye-pit quite down to the bottom. Do not cut through the skin, but get down to the very bottom of the eye-pit, and detach the skin from the bone.
5. Be careful not to cut the corners of the eye, or the edge of the eyelid. Keep close to the bony orbit, and insert the end of one finger in the eye from the outside, to cut against when you sever the thin membrane that surrounds the eyeball.
6. The nostrils must be cut through so far back from the end of the nose that the cut will not be visible in the open nostril when viewed from in front. The cartilaginous septum that divides the nostrils like a partition wall must be split in two, edgewise, from inside, clear down to the very tip of the nose, so that all the flesh can be cut away. Many a fine head is spoiled by having the flesh left in the end of the nose. It seems all right for a short time, but when it dries, it shrinks and shrivels up, and the nose not only loses all character and beauty, but becomes an eyesore.
7. The lips must be cut from the jaw close to the bone, and afterward slit open along the inside, laid out flat, and the flesh pared off carefully with a sharp knife. Leave one-half to three-quarters of an inch of the inner skin of the lip all the way around, so that the form of the lip can be presently reproduced by replacing the flesh with clay.
8. A deer's ear consists of a big, leaf-shaped piece of cartilage, thick at the base and centre, very thin at the edges and the upper end, and rolled together on itself at the base to form a half cone, like a funnel with one side partly cut away. Over this sheet of cartilage is stretched the skin, with no flesh whatever between the two. This cartilage can be completely skinned out and replaced with a leaden imitation. It must be skinned out; for if it is not done, the hair will probably all slip off the ear; but, even supposing that it does not, an equally bad thing happens. When the head is mounted and dry, the ears will begin to shrink and shrivel up like a pair of dry autumn leaves, and the beauty of the head is gone forever! In skinning out the ear cartilage, a sharp scalpel of large size, or a cartilage-knife, is the best instrument, and it should be held in the fingers precisely as one holds a pen in writing. A good, keen pocket-knife is plenty good enough for all emergencies.
[a]Fig. 33.]—Skinning a Deer's Ear.
Begin at the fleshy base of the ear, detach the skin from the cartilage by cutting, and by pulling and pushing the two apart with the thumb and fingers (Fig. 33). Of course you must stop at the edge of the cartilage, and be very careful not to cut through the skin there. Keep right on up the back of the ear, gradually turning the ear wrong side out, until you reach the tip (Fig. 34). The ear is now wrong side out, and the skin is detached from the back of the cartilage, but still adheres on the inside. Now begin at the tip, where the cartilage is thinnest (Fig. 35), peel it up, and by the same process as before gradually work the inside skin loose without cutting through the skin at any point, until it is free quite down to the base of the ear, so far within that when the skin is cut straight across and turned right side out again, the point of detachment cannot be seen (Fig. 36).
[a]Fig. 34.]—The Ear Half-skinned.
It is likely that the beginner will find this a difficult operation, for it really is so until one has done at least one pair of ears. After that, with a fresh specimen, the process is simple and easy. Save the ear cartilage in your salt-and-alum bath, for you will need it presently as a model in making a leaden imitation to take its place.
9. The skin is now off. To preserve it in the field, first pare away the flesh that may have been left adhering to it, especially at the lips and end of the nose, and wash it clean. If you have arsenical soap, anoint it thoroughly over the inside, then literally smother it in salt. You need not dry the skin if you have plenty of salt for it. If you have but a limited quantity, attend to the poisoning to keep off insects, then rub on as much salt as you have to spare, hang the skin up in a shady place over a pole, open it out widely so that the air will circulate freely upon all parts of it, and let it dry. In a dry climate a skin can be dried in this way and successfully preserved (temporarily) even when you have neither poison nor preservative of any kind to put on it; but it must be watched and guarded with jealous care until you get it safely home, or in the hands of a taxidermist, to prevent its being eaten up by insects, rats, or dogs.
[a]Fig. 35.]—Skinning down the Inside. [a]Fig. 36.]—The Cartilage Out.
In moist climates, ground alum is to be used in lieu of salt, and all skins must be dried unless you have a salt-and-alum bath for them. In preserving heads, the sportsman will find that ten pounds of salt, or in the tropics ten pounds of alum, will go a long ways, if care is taken to keep a skin open until it is nearly dry. Never, save as a last resort, dry a skin in the sun, and never hang one up by the nose.
The Skull.—Of course the skull must always be cleaned and saved, as directed elsewhere.
Paring down the skin, preparatory to mounting. See Chapter XIII.
The Work of Mounting.—We will suppose that the head skin has been fully cured or relaxed in the salt-and-alum bath, pared down quite thin with draw-shave and knife, the holes have been neatly sewn up, and the ear cartilages skinned out. We will also suppose that the skull has been cleaned with the knife in the first place, and afterward boiled and scraped to remove the last vestiges of animal matter. If the skin and skull have been thus attended to, the mounted head will be clean enough and free enough from all animal odors, when dry, to go into my lady's boudoir, or into the dining-room of the White House.
There are almost as many different methods of mounting mammal heads as there are taxidermists, but I shall describe only my own. I have tried various other methods than that to be described, but without satisfactory results, and I offer this as being at once the simplest and easiest for the amateur, as well as the professional worker, and above all, the one by which the finest results are obtainable. The operator retains full control of the shape of the specimen almost up to the last moment, which I consider a sine qua non in any method. The method should be your servant, not your master. Judging from the extent to which this method has been adopted among the taxidermists of this country since I first described it in a paper read before the Society of American Taxidermists, in New York, in 1883, it may be considered to possess some merit.
1. We have before us the clean skull. Procure about two pounds of plaster Paris, and a piece of board an inch or an inch and a half thick, three or four inches wide, and about two feet long. This is to be the neck standard. With the hatchet round off the corners of one end. Then, with a saw and cold chisel, cut a long, narrow hole in the base of the skull, so that the end of the neck standard can pass through it into the brain cavity, and strike against the top of the skull (Fig. 37). The opening should be cut lengthwise with the skull, and only just large enough to receive the end of the board comfortably. In case it is desired to have the head turned to one side, looking to the right or left, the neck standard must be fitted into the skull accordingly. An iron rod may be used instead of a wooden standard, if the operator finds it more convenient.
[a]Fig. 37.]—Internal Mechanism of a Deer Head.
2. Now place the skull upside down on the table, with the forehead on a level with the table-top, and proceed to set one end of the neck standard in the skull. This is done as follows: Into about a quart of water, placed in a basin or large bowl, sprinkle the plaster Paris, a handful at a time, until the water is filled with it and will take up no more. Then stir it thoroughly with a spoon, and after placing the end of the neck standard in the skull cavity in a perpendicular position, pour the plaster around the end of it, filling the brain cavity, and piling it up on the base of the skull in a copious mass, so that when it hardens the board will be immovably fixed. The plaster should also fill around the articulations of the lower jaw, to make that also a fixture in its place. The neck standard should be set at a right angle with the axis of the skull. This may seem strange to you at first, but you will presently see that the angle is correct.
While the plaster is hardening, which it will do in about twenty minutes, you must leave the head undisturbed and busy yourself with giving the final touches to the skin, or to the preparation of some clay and tow for future use.
[a]Fig. 38.]—Complete Manikin for Deer Head, without Clay Covering.
3. When the plaster has fully set, you are ready to decide upon the length of neck to be shown, and the general pose of the head. Having decided upon the former, which is a matter of taste, you can have an assistant hold the side of the neck standard up against the side of a door-post in about the pose you wish it to have, while you stand off and survey it at a distance, and change the elevation until it suits you. Then, mark where the neck standard is to be sawn off, and also the precise angle, and saw it off. Having done this, have the head held up against the wall as it will be when mounted, and see that the elevation of the nose is right. If it is too high or too low, saw off the end of the neck standard at a different angle, and be sure that the attitude is right before proceeding farther.
4. The next step is to cut a board to fit into the lower end of the neck. Its approximate circumference can be determined by measuring the width and depth of the neck the proper distance down. The shape of the board must be about like that shown in Fig. 37—a broad oval, broadest at the top, or else an ellipse. Bevel off the upper and lower ends on opposite sides to match the outline of the neck, and then screw it firmly to the lower end of the neck standard. It may be necessary to alter the shape of the neck-board a little later on, which is easily done.
5. Now take some excelsior, or straw, or fine, soft hay, and build up a false neck of the proper shape and size to fit the skin by placing the material around the neck standard and winding it down with cotton twine (Fig. 38). It is a very pleasing task to form a neck by this easy process, and impart to it the graceful curves, the taper, and flatness near the head so characteristic of the deer. You can show the windpipe and gullet by sewing through the neck from side to side, and forming a hollow from the corner of the jaw down the side of the neck, as shown in the figure. You now have the form of the neck wholly under your control, and your eye and hand will be held accountable for the result. Be careful to make the neck much smaller than it is to be when the skin is on. The thick coat of hair makes a vast difference in the size, and adds perhaps half an inch, or more, all around.
If you are mounting an old skin that has for years been in a dry state and requires much powerful stretching to bring it out to its proper size, you will be compelled to stuff the neck with straw in the old way, so as to put great pressure upon it from within, and stretch the skin by sheer force. Of course you will lose many of the fine points, but very often a skin is so hard and refractory that it can be mounted in no other way. In working by this method the neck is stuffed from the lower end, and the neck-board fitted and screwed into place afterward.
6. Make the neck smooth by winding; make it symmetrical and true to nature, and try the skin on it occasionally to test the proportions of your manikin. There is to be no "stuffing" of the neck after the skin is once on, therefore the manikin must be made correctly.
7. When the neck is at last finished, work up about half a pailful of potters' clay until it forms a soft, sticky paste, and cover the neck with a coat of it about an eighth of an inch thick, to insure absolute smoothness.
8. Put a proper quantity of clay on each side of the skull to form the animal's cheeks, and enough upon the back of the skull, forehead, and muzzle to replace the flesh and skin that has been cut away. On no account attempt to stuff a fresh head with tow, or any fibrous material, for it is a practical impossibility to keep it from becoming too large. Instead of clay you might possibly use papier-maché, putty, or plaster Paris, if you prefer either; but clay has many and great advantages over all other materials. Plaster Paris acts too quickly to be of much real use, putty is greasy and inert, and papier-maché dries too slowly when underneath a skin.
9. Before putting the skin in place, sew up whatever rents there may be in it, and replace the cartilage of the ear with thin sheet lead, or sheet tin, cut the proper shape and trimmed down thin at the edges. Rub a little clay on the metal to enable the skin to stick to it. Sheet lead can be purchased at about 10 cents per pound at almost any large plumbing establishment. The finest material, however, and which I have used for years, is pure sheet tin, which the National Museum procures of The John J. Cooke Co., Mulberry Street, New York, at 26 cents per pound. It is thin, easily cut and shaped, and just stiff enough to work perfectly in imitating the shape of an ear cartilage. Good, firm, card-board can be used for the ears instead of lead, when you can not get either of the sheet metals.
10. Anoint the skin copiously with arsenical soap, give it time to absorb the poison, then put it in place on the skull and neck, and adjust it carefully. Fasten the lips together at the end of the muzzle by taking a stitch in each and tying the thread. See that the eyes come exactly over the orbits, and then put two or three tacks through the skin of the forehead, into the skull, to hold it in place. Sew the skin tightly together around the base of the antlers, and sew up both arms of the Y.
11. Sometimes the skin of the neck is so much stretched that to fill it out would make the neck, when finished, entirely too large. In such cases, with a clay-covered manikin, it is possible to make a fresh skin contract mechanically by crowding it together in minute wrinkles in order to make an undue fulness disappear.
12. Before sewing up the skin along the back of the neck, (which must be done with very strong linen "gilling thread," well waxed to keep it from rotting) put enough clay at the base of each ear and on the back of the skull to properly form those parts. Observe that in a live deer the base of the ear is quite close up to the burr of the antler, and it also has a peculiar shape, which should be studied and faithfully reproduced, but can hardly be described.
13. If the manikin is of the right size and shape, you are now ready to sew up the skin; nail it fast with small brads around the lower edge of the neck-board, and trim the surplus off neatly and evenly. Screw the head upon a rough shield or piece of board, so that it will stand alone on your table while you are working at the face.
14. Unless you have carefully studied a deer's head in the flesh, or have a cast to work by, you can not reasonably expect to be able to make the head precisely as it should be. Fifteen minutes of close and studious examination and note-taking of a head in the flesh will do for you what my poor pen could not hope to accomplish with ten pages of written matter.
15. There yet remains that part of the work which requires the most artistic treatment. In finishing the face, the first thing is to shape the cheeks, which is quickly done provided they are filled with precisely the proper quantity of clay. By trial you will find whether more clay must be put in, or some taken out. After the cheeks, form the eyebrow, fill the orbit with clay, and with a small wire nail fasten the skin down in that deep pit which is found in front of the anterior corner of the eye. Press the skin down upon the muzzle, fill in the lips with clay, and fold them as they were before skinning. Before bringing the lips together, fill out the nose, the chin, and corners of the mouth—but not too full, however. That done satisfactorily, bring the lips together as they were in life. No wiring or sewing is necessary, nor even pinning. It is to be supposed that you have kept the skin of the lower jaw pulled well forward into place, and if so, the lips will go together easily and stay there for all time to come. In modeling the end of the nose and the nostrils, give the latter good depth. Make the opening so deep that no one can ever see the bottom of it. No little fault disgusts me more than to see the nostrils of a deer, buffalo, or elk all plastered up with putty, as if the animal had never drawn a breath. Make your animal look as if it were breathing, rather than standing up with rods in its legs, and its hide full of rubbish.
PLATE XI.
[a]Head of Prong-horn Antelope.]
[a]Mounted by the Author.]
16. The eyes come next. Arrange the lids carefully over the clay, which nearly fills the orbit, then insert the glass eye, (which in every ruminant should have an elongated pupil and white corners), and work it into its exact position. Do not have too much clay behind it, or it will have a bulging, overfed, or choked-to-death expression. Do not let it protrude until it could be knocked off the head with a bean-pole, or lassoed with a grape-vine. Keep the eye well down in the orbit, and the front corner well sunken. An animal's expression depends upon the eye more than any other one thing, and the expression of the eye is dependent upon the disposition of the eyelid and the line of sight. A good glass eye has just as much power of varied expression as has a living, naked eyeball—which is no power whatever—unless it be the eyeball of an angry cat.
17. See that both eyes look at the same point, in front, about eight feet distant; that precisely the same amount of iris shows in each, in short, that both are exactly alike in every respect. A deer should have a mild, but wide-awake—not staring—expression, and the attitude should not be unpleasantly strained, either in the curve of the neck or the carriage of the head. Avoid the common error of making a deer's head too "proud." No goose-necks or goitre on your deer, if you please.
Having finished the eyes and fashioned the nostrils, cut some pieces of pasteboard, bend them to the right shape, and either sew or pin them upon the ears to hold them in precisely the right attitude until they dry. If the ears have lead in them they will support themselves. Lastly, wash the head thoroughly to get all the dirt and clay out of the hair, and comb it until it lays naturally. Now hang the head up in a dry room and leave it for a month, if possible, two weeks at all hazards.
When quite dry and shrunken, brush it well, and rub around the mouth, nose, eyes, and ears with a tooth-brush to remove the last remaining suggestions of clay. (See chapter on "Finishing Mounted Mammals."). Paint the end of the nose and edges of the eyelids with vandyke brown and black, using oil colors. The hairless parts of the lips are entirely concealed, consequently there is no painting to be done around the mouth unless the shrinkage has slightly parted the lips. If this has occurred put some black paint in the crack.
By all means mount a handsome head upon a rich and handsome shield. Tastes differ widely, but for my part I dislike a thin, light shield, and one not nicely finished is also an eyesore. The wood should be of a color that will harmonize best with the color of the head upon it. The finest shields are made of cherry ebonized, or red-wood, black walnut, oak, mahogany, or maple, and highly polished. The best shape for a shield is such as that seen behind the caribou head in Plate XVI.
[CHAPTER XX.]
FACIAL EXPRESSION AND MOUTH MODELING.
We have now reached one of the most interesting features of all taxidermic work. There is no royal road to success in this direction, nor aught else that leads thither save hard study, hard work, and an artistic sense of the eternal fitness of things.
The large Felidæ (tiger, lion, leopard, etc.) are the finest subjects for the taxidermist that the whole animal kingdom can produce. They offer the finest opportunities for the development of muscular anatomy, and the expression of the various higher passions. The best that I can do with the space at my disposal for this subject is to offer the reader a few hints on how to produce certain expressions, illustrated by an accurate drawing from one of my mounted specimens.
In the first place, strive to catch the spirit of your subject.
It frequently happens that the attitude desired for a feline or other carnivorous animal is one expressive of anger, rage, or defiance. For a single specimen, the most striking attitude possible is that of a beast at bay. Unless a carnivorous animal is to be represented in the act of seizing something, the mouth should not be opened very wide. It is a common fault with taxidermists to open the jaws of such an animal too widely, so that the effect striven for is lost, and the animal seems to be yawning prodigiously, instead of snarling. Open the jaws a moderate distance, indicating a readiness to open wider without an instant's warning. The thick, fleshy part of the upper lip is lifted up to clear the teeth for action, and the mustached portion is bunched up until it shows two or three curving wrinkles, with the middle of the curve upward. This crowds the nostril opening together, and changes its shape very materially. In most carnivora, but most strikingly so in bears, the end of the lower lip falls away slightly from the lower incisors.
In old lions and tigers the face wrinkles pretty much all over, especially across the nose and under the eyes. In all the Felidæ the opening of the eye changes most strikingly. When angry, the eye of a ruminant animal opens its widest, and shows portions of the eyeball that are never seen otherwise. In the carnivora, the reverse is the case. As if to protect the eye from being clawed or bitten, the upper eyelid is drawn well down over the ball, as seen in Plate I. (Frontispiece), and the eyebrows are bunched up and drawn near together until the scowl becomes frightful. The decks are further cleared for action in the disposition of the ears. Instead of leaving them up ready to be bitten off, they are "unshipped," and laid back as far as possible, close down upon the neck, and out of harm's way. The tongue also pulls itself together, contracts in the middle, curves up at the edges, and makes ready to retire farther back between the jaws at the instant of seizure.
All this time the body is not by any means standing idly and peacefully at ease. The attitude must match the expression of the face, or the tragedy becomes a farce. The body must stand firmly on its legs, alert, ready either to attack or defend, head turned, body slightly bent, or slightly crouching, and, unless the animal is walking, with the tail switching nervously from side to side. If the animal is walking forward, the tail should be held still and in the same vertical plane as the body. The finest attitude for a large carnivor is one which represents it at bay, and awaiting attack. A cat is an animal of a thousand attitudes. Very many of them, if reproduced exactly in a mounted specimen, would look very uncouth and devoid of beauty; therefore, choose those which are at once characteristic and pleasing to the eye.
Modeling an Open Mouth.—In mounting a feline animal with mouth open and teeth showing, beware what you do, or you will make the animal laughing instead of snarling. This is often done! In fact, in my younger days I did it once myself—but without any extra charge.
In modeling an open mouth, first fill the inside of the lips with clay, and also back them up underneath with clay until the lips, when fixed in position, have the expression desired. The inner edge of the hairless portion of the lower lip should fit up close against the jaw bone, and perhaps be tacked down upon it temporarily. Very often it is necessary to hold the lips in position, while drying, by sewing through the edges and passing the thread across the jaws from side to side. The skin of the nose must be fully backed up with clay, so that no hollows are left into which the skin can shrink away in drying. It is often desirable to hold the end of the lower lip up to its place, while drying, by driving a small wire nail through it into the bone.
Do not fill the mouth full of clay, for it must be borne in mind that the final modeling of the soft parts of the mouth must be done in papier-maché. It is no small task to dig out of a mouth a quantity of clay and tow after it has become hard; therefore, leave a place for the tongue.
Modeling Tools of Wood.
A head must be thoroughly dry and shrunken before the mouth can be finished and made permanent. In drying, the lips draw away from the gums somewhat, which is just as it should be. The first step is to clear away the dry clay from around the teeth and lips, and get everything clean and ready for the maché. Then make some fine papier-maché, as described elsewhere, that is sticky enough to adhere firmly to smooth bone, and of such consistency that it works well in modeling. With this, and your modeling spatulas and other tools of steel, zinc, or hard wood (see Figs. 39-44), cover the jaw bones to replace the fleshy gums, and fill up to the edges of the lips so that they seem to be attached to the gums as in life. Coat the roof of the mouth, and model its surface into the same peculiar corrugations that you saw in the mouth immediately after death.
This is slow work. It requires a good eye, a skilful, artistic touch, and unlimited patience. If you are an artist, prove it now by the fidelity with which you copy nature in this really difficult work.
In modeling the surface of papier-maché, you must have a clean, well-polished modeling-tool, like Fig. 42, and by wetting it now and then so that it will slip over the surface, your work can be made very smooth.
Next comes the tongue. The only perfect tongue for a feline animal is a natural tongue, skinned, and stuffed with clay. The papillæ on the tongue of a lion, tiger, leopard, or puma simply defy imitation, and after many experiments with many different animals I found that with the real tongue, and with that only, one can reproduce nature itself and defy criticism. Of course, this is possible only when you have the animal in the flesh, and can cut out the tongue and preserve it in alcohol until you are ready to mount it.
Modeling Tools of Steel.
To prepare a tiger's tongue, for example, first preserve the whole tongue in alcohol, for safe keeping. When ready to proceed, slit it open lengthwise underneath, and skin it carefully. Take a piece of sheet lead, cut it and hammer it into the right size and shape, and fit it in the mouth as nearly as possible in the shape the finished tongue is to have. By judicious hammering with the round end of a machinist's hammer you can give it any shape you desire. When it is just right, cover it with clay to replace the flesh of the tongue, treat the skin with arsenical soap, put it over, and sew it up. Now fit the tongue into the mouth, and by pressure with the fingers change its shape wherever necessary in order to make it fit exactly as you wish to have it. When finished, lay it aside to dry. The accompanying figures were drawn from the finished tongue of the tiger represented in Plate I., where it is seen in place.
[a]Fig. 45.]—Side View of Tiger's Tongue.
When the tongue is dry it must be painted with oil colors, using a little turpentine so that the surface shall not be too glossy, nor have a varnished look. Vermilion and white are the best colors to use, and above all do not make the tongue or lips look like pink candy, or red flannel, or red sealing-wax. Call up the household cat at an early stage of the proceedings, and use her mouth as a model, whether she will or no. A patient old tabby is an invaluable ally in the mounting of feline animals of all sorts, and Towser will also help you out with your Canidæ. When modeling the mouth or muscles of a gorilla or orang utan, catch the first amateur taxidermist you can lay your hands on—the wilder and greener the better—and use him as your model. Study him, for he is fearfully and wonderfully made. The way some of my good-natured colleagues used to pose for me as (partly) nude models at Ward's, when I once had a ten-months' siege with orangs, gorillas, and chimpanzees, was a constant source of wonder and delight to the ribald crew of osteologists who knew nothing of high art.
[a]Fig. 46.]—End View.
Fortunately the tongues of most large mammals are smooth, and are easily reproduced by using the same leaden core as described above, and covering it first with papier-maché, drying it, and coating with tinted wax, laid on hot with a small flat paint-brush called a "fitch." With small specimens it is not necessary to make the tongue as a separate piece, or put a leaden core in it. Fill into the mouth a sufficient quantity of papier-maché, pack it down, and then proceed to model the surface of it into a tongue, shaped to suit the subject. Such a tongue is, of course, a fixture in the mouth.
Cleaning Teeth.—Before finishing a mouth with wax, the teeth must be washed clean with a stiff brush. If they will not come out white enough to suit you, wash them with a solution of two parts muriatic acid and one part water, applied with a tooth-brush if possible. Let it stay on the teeth about a quarter of a minute, when it must be washed off with an abundance of clear water. If the acid stays on too long, it will destroy the entire outer surface (enamel) of the teeth.
Waxing a Mouth.—Of course it will answer, and sometimes quite well enough, perhaps, when a mouth has been handsomely and smoothly modeled in fine papier-maché, to sand-paper it and paint it over when dry with two or three coats of oil color. You can hardly do otherwise, in fact, when you are not prepared to work with wax. But the really fine way, however, is to coat your dry papier-maché with tinted wax as follows:
Procure from the nearest dealer in artists' materials some cakes of white wax. You must also have a small oil or gas stove, or a spirit-lamp, and rig above it a wire frame on which you can set your wax cup. The wax cups should be small, and made of pressed tin, so that they contain no soldered joints. The wax is to be applied hot, or at least quite warm, for bear in mind that if you heat your wax too hot it changes its color quite perceptibly, and makes it dark and yellow. Wax should always be clear and transparent, and when the excess of heat turns it yellow, throw it away.
[a]Fig. 47.]—Tiger's Tongue, Top View.
Regulate the heat carefully, so as to make it gentle. Melt a small portion of a cake of wax in one of your clean tin cups, and if it is the tongue, roof of the mouth or gums, that you have to cover, color the wax a delicate flesh tint by putting into it a very little vermilion, or other suitable color, from your Windsor & Newton oil-color tube. Oil colors mix very well with hot wax; but in using it, it is necessary to keep the wax well stirred with the brush, or the color will settle to the bottom.
Take a clean, dry bristle brush, of the right size (the flat brushes are always best for wax), with a good, compact point, dip it into the hot wax, stir from the bottom, and then, before the wax on your brush has even two seconds in which to get cool, apply it to the surface to be covered, with a quick, dextrous touch, sweeping it on broadly to keep it from piling up and making the surface rough. This wax business requires genuine skill, and, after beginning, one must not be discouraged because it does not "go right" at first, but try, try again. After your hand has acquired the trick, the beauty of the results will amply repay your labor.
It is very difficult to change the surface of a coat of wax after it is once on; therefore try to get it right with the brush. Of course, if the color or surface does not suit you, scrape it all off, and "to 't again." To treat the roof of the mouth, the specimen must be turned upside down. At the point where the black lip joins the pink gums, the two colors can be nicely blended by letting the last layers of pink wax lap over a trifle, upon the black, so that the latter will show through the former here and there, and give the line of demarcation a mottled appearance, with the two colors thus blended together. Much can be done by taking advantage of the transparency of thin layers of wax when its color is light.
After the wax has cooled, something can be done to smooth the surface, and give it a very shiny appearance, by carefully scraping the surface over smoothly with the edge of a knife, or a sharp bone-scraper. The latter tool will be found of great value in modeling a mouth in papier-maché, and also in trimming up the wax after it has been applied.
Cleaning Glass Eyes.—Always have the glass eyes of a finished specimen faultlessly clean and well polished, to give the brilliancy of life. If paint gets on the glass, remove it with a drop of turpentine, and polish afterward with a bit of cotton cloth. Some of the old-fashioned taxidermists have the habit of smearing a lot of nasty lamp-black in the eyes of every mounted mammal, for what purpose no one knows—but possibly in imitation of actresses, some of whom have the same unaccountable trick, and a hideous one it is in its results, in both cases. There is only one point in its favor—it is the easiest way in the world to give an animal a black eye.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
RELAXING DRY SKINS OF BIRDS.
As usual with most processes in taxidermy, there are several ways in which a dry bird skin may be softened, and made ready to mount or make over. I will first describe the one I consider the best in all respects.
Treatment of Small Skins.—Open the skin and remove the filling from the body, neck, and head. Tear some old cotton cloth into strips from one to two inches wide, wet them in warm water and wrap one around each leg and foot until it is completely covered with several thicknesses of the wet cloth. Lift up the wing and put two or three thicknesses of wet cloth, or else thoroughly wet cotton batting, around the carpal joints, and also between the wing and the body. Put some more wet cotton, or rags, inside the skin, in the body and neck, wrap the whole specimen completely in several thicknesses of wet cloth, so as to exclude the air, and lay it aside. If the skin is no larger than a robin, in about twelve to fourteen hours it will be soft enough to mount. The scraping and cleaning will be considered later.
Treatment of Large Skins.—Under this heading it is necessary to place nearly all birds above the size of a robin, for the reason that the legs and feet, being large and thick in comparison with the skin of the body, require special treatment in advance. The legs and wings of some birds require several days' soaking, and were the thin skin of the body to be relaxed for the same length of time, it would macerate, and the feathers would fall off. The legs and wings of large birds must, therefore, be started first in the relaxing process.
Let us take, for example, the skin of a ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus). If the skin is an old one, cover the toe-nails and beak with hot wax, or else by much soaking the horny sheaths will flake off. Wrap the feet and legs with wet cloths, as described above, and let the skin lie without any other wrapping for one day. By the end of that time the joints can be bent somewhat, and they should be manipulated until they bend easily. When they will do this, put wet cloths around the joints of the wings, under the wings, inside of the body and the neck, and wrap the whole skin in a wet cloth of the proper size. By the end of the second day the entire skin will be soft and pliable, and smelling like an African shanty—damp and musty.
Of course the larger the skin the longer it will take to completely relax. Sometimes the wings of very large birds require soaking half as long as the legs, but care must be exercised not to soak any feathered parts too long, or the feathers are liable to fall out and cause trouble. By this process skins may be softened and made ready to mount, according to their size, as follows: Wren to robin, in twelve to fourteen hours; ruffed grouse, two days; great blue heron, three days; bald eagle, four days; condor, five days; ostrich, six to seven days. Skins which are less than one year old soften in about half the time they would require if five years old, and if properly made in the first place, will make as handsome mounted specimens as would fresh skins.
Wet Sand.—Some taxidermists soften dry bird skins by burying them in wet sand after the legs and wings have been relaxed in the way already described. I have tried it occasionally with small skins, and found that the results were quite satisfactory.
A Good "Sweat-Box."—Professor L.L. Dyche, of the University of Kansas, described to me a sweat-box which he has used, and which is certainly a good one for the creation of a damp atmosphere for the softening of skins, and also to keep half-finished birds in over night, to prevent them from drying up. What a deal of trouble the bird taxidermists of my acquaintance might have saved themselves during the last ten years had they known of, or devised, this simple but perfect contrivance. It is made by selecting a wooden box, of the right size to suit, providing a hinged cover, and coating the entire inside with plaster Paris an inch or so in thickness. To make use of it, it is filled with water and allowed to stand until the plaster lining has soaked full, when the rest of the water is emptied out. If a layer of wet sand is spread over the bottom, the saturation of the air inside the box, when closed, will be still more complete.
A Heroic Method of Relaxation.—Mr. William Brewster thus describes "A New Wrinkle in Taxidermy," in Messrs. Southwick & Jencks' "Random Notes," vol. ii., No. 1:
"Wishing to turn a mounted bird into a skin, and having but a limited time to devote to the task, I tried an experiment. Taking a funnel, and inserting the pointed end in the stuffing between the edges of the skin on the abdomen, I poured in a quantity of hot water (nearly boiling hot) taking care to regulate the injection so that it should be rather slowly absorbed by the stuffing, and holding the bird at various angles, that every portion of the anterior might become soaked. The effect was magical; the skin quickly relaxed, and within fifteen minutes I could bend the neck and make other required changes without any risk of a break.
"My first experiment was with a gull; afterward I tried other birds, both large and small, with equal success. I found also that the plan worked equally well with skins which had been overstuffed, or otherwise badly made. In a very few minutes they would become nearly as tractable as when freshly taken from the birds, and much more so than I have ever succeeded in making them by the use of a damping-box. The only difficulty experienced was that the water, especially if turned in too fast, would escape through shot-holes and other rents in the skin, thus wetting the plumage in places. Of course, after the required improvements or changes have been made, the stuffing is so thoroughly saturated that the skin must be placed in a very warm place to dry. I dried mine most successfully by placing them on a furnace register, and leaving them exposed to the full blast of heat for several days."
Scraping and Cleaning Relaxed Skins.—After a dry bird skin has been softened, it then remains to scrape it clean and manipulate it all over to get it into thoroughly elastic working order, as soft and pliable (if possible) as when first taken off. Small skins should be scraped with the round end of a small bone-scraper, which has a sharp chisel edge, but the large ones must be scraped with a small-toothed skin-scraper such as is used on small mammals.
Of the many thousand species of recent birds, only the ostriches, penguins, and a few others have the feathers distributed evenly over the whole body. In all the Euornithes they are arranged in regular patches or groups, called pterylæ, between which lie the naked or downy spaces, called apteria. In thin-skinned birds it is the pterylæ that need to be attacked with the scraper, and so scraped and stretched and pulled apart that the skin widens, and each feather is free, as in life, to move on its own root independently, and take whatever position it should have on the mounted bird. Turn the skin completely wrong side out, scrape it all over, and get every part fully relaxed, and into thorough working order. Large birds, or birds with thick, fat skins, require plenty of work to get out all the grease, and get the wings, legs, and head into a thorough state of collapse. In large, long-legged birds, the tendons must be removed from the leg, the same as if the specimen were a fresh one, for otherwise the wire may split the skin of the tarsus wide open, and make a very bad and unsightly turn at the heel besides. It is a difficult task to remove the tendon from the leg of an old, dry heron or crane, but it must be done.
Damaged Skins.—It not infrequently happens that in cleaning and scraping a rare and valuable old skin it proves to be "burnt" with grease, and goes to pieces like so much brown paper.
"Now is the winter of our discontent."
If the skin is not torn too badly it may be lined with thin cotton or linen cloth, which must be cut and fitted within, and sewed fast to the skin all over. This plan, though rather tedious to work out, develops admirably when determinedly and carefully pursued.
If the skin goes all to pieces, a manikin must be made, and the pieces glued upon it, one by one, beginning at the tail,—a process which is so simple it is unnecessary to describe it in detail. In Fig. 50 is seen a manikin all ready to receive its feathers, wings, and head.
PLATE XII.
[a]Workshop of a Bird Taxidermist.]
[CHAPTER XXII.]
MOUNTING SMALL BIRDS.
We will suppose that the skin of a small bird—a robin, blackbird, or thrush—now lies on the table before us all ready for mounting. Perhaps it is a dry skin which has been thoroughly relaxed, scraped, and worked into pliant shape; but, for the sake of the beginner, we will assume that it is a fresh skin which has just been taken off, poisoned, and turned right side out again, in accordance with the directions for skinning small birds which have been given in Chapter VI. The body of the bird lies before you, and instead of making up the subject as a dry skin, we will mount it.
In mounting small birds the following tools are absolutely necessary to the production of good results: A pair of flat-nosed pliers six inches long, for bending and clinching wires, price sixty cents; a pair of six-inch cutting pliers, for cutting wire, eighty-five cents; a pair of bird-stuffer's forceps, four to six inch, price twenty to seventy-five cents; a nine-inch flat file, twenty-two cents. Make for yourself a stuffing-rod, by taking a piece of stiff brass or iron wire, a little larger and longer than a knitting-needle, hammering one end flat, with a slight upward curve, and inserting the other in an awl-handle.
Of materials you will need some excelsior; some clean, fine tow; a little putty or potter's clay; a spool of cotton thread, No. 40, and some suitable glass eyes. With our tools and materials ready at hand, and the skin of our bird lying before us right side out, we are ready to begin a new operation,—mounting.
For a bird the size of a robin or cat-bird, cut two pieces of No. 18 soft or "annealed" iron wire (hard wire heated red hot and allowed to cool slowly), each three times the length of the bird's legs, from foot to end of long leg-bone, or tarsus. File one end of each wire to a slender and very sharp point, and rub a little oil or grease on each so that it will easily slip when inside the leg.
[a]Fig. 48.]—Wiring a Bird's Leg.
Now take one of the bird's legs between the thumb and finger of the left hand, holding it at the foot with the back part uppermost, and with the other hand enter the point of one of the sharpened wires at the centre of foot, push the wire up the back of the leg and over the heel until the point reaches to where the leg has been skinned. Be sure that you do not run the wire up the side of the leg, either at foot or knee, for if you do it will show badly when the bird is dry. Also be careful not to run the sharpened wire out through the skin just above the heel. To avoid this, grasp the leg at the heel between the thumb and middle finger of left hand, and by strong upward pressure of the first finger under the end of the leg-bone, and of the fourth finger under the foot, both joints of the leg can be held exactly in line until the wire passes the heel safely and enters the open skin above (Fig. 48). Then we turn back the skin of the leg till we see the point of the wire, after which we push the wire on up until the point passes the end of the leg bone. We now cut off the thick upper end of this bone, (the tibia), and wrap a little fine tow smoothly around the bone and the wire, to replace the flesh cut away. The other leg must, of course, be similarly treated. We are now ready to make the body.
We have kept the body of our specimen for reference, and now we measure the length of both body and neck, cut another wire not quite twice their length and file it sharp at both ends. This will be the neck-wire. Now take a handful of excelsior (tow or oakum will also serve), compress it into an egg-shaped ball—smaller and more pointed at one end than the other, and wrap a very little fine tow loosely around it, to make it smooth on the outside when finished. Now wind stout linen thread around it, shaping it all the time by pressing it between your left thumb and forefinger, until at last you have a firm body, smoothly wound, of the same general shape and size as the natural one. When the body is half made you may run the neck-wire through it lengthwise, letting it come out above the centre of the larger end, because the neck is but a continuation of the backbone, which lies at the top of the body. When the wire is inserted, the upper side of the body—the back—must be pinched together and made more narrow than the breast, which is round and full. Be sure that the body is not too large. Better have it too small and too short than too large or long, for the former can be remedied later on by filling out. When the body is finished, bend up the end of the neck wire for an inch and a half at the lower end of the body, enter the point in the lower part of the body and force it down and backward until the end is firmly clinched and will forever remain so, no matter what is done with the other end. Make the neck by wrapping fine, soft tow smoothly and evenly around the neck wire from the body upward for the proper distance. Make the false neck a trifle larger than the real one, but no longer. The body is now ready for insertion.
[a]Fig. 49.]—Cross Section of Body.
The next step is to take a thread and tie the elbows together, fastening to each humerus just above the elbow-joint. Now take the false body in the right hand, open the skin, introduce the sharp end of the neck-wire into the neck skin, force the wire through the top of the skull in the centre, and push it through until the neck and body come nicely into place. Now see whether the body is of the right size. It should not be so large as to fill the skin precisely, for if so it is too large.
[a]Fig. 50.]—The Finished Body and Neck, with Legs in Position.
We must now fasten the legs to the body, and will take the left one first. The leg is still perfectly straight. Hold the lower part firmly between the thumb and finger, grasp the leg-wire, push it on through the leg and enter the sharp point at about the centre of the left side of the false body, and slanting a little forward. (See Fig. 51.) Now push the wire through the body until it projects more than twice the thickness of the body on the right side. Bend the end of the wire until it forms a hook, with the point just touching the body. Now pull the wire back until the point is again forced through and out on the left side for half an inch, which is then bent down and forced firmly into the excelsior, and securely clinched. Wire both legs in this way, and the bird will be so firmly put together it would be almost impossible to pull it asunder.
The legs move freely up and down the leg-wires. Push them up toward the body until the heels are in precisely the same places they were before you skinned the bird—almost hidden in the feathers at a point about opposite the middle of the bird's wing. Now bend the legs forward at a proper angle (see a living bird or a good picture) and push some finely cut tow down on each side of the body to fill out the place of the thighs. Insert a little more cut tow, evenly distributed, in the breast, where the crop would properly be, and some more at the base of the tail.
[a]Fig. 51.]—How the Leg Wires are Inserted and Clinched in the False Body.
Be sure there are no lumps or wrongly placed masses of chopped tow anywhere in the skin, for if there are any you can not expect to get a smooth and well-shaped bird.
Now take a needle and thread, begin at the upper end of the opening in the bird—on the breast,—and with careful fingers sew the skin together without tearing it or catching the feathers fast. Fill in a little tow, if necessary, as you proceed, but not enough to fill the skin hard and full, and when you reach the lower end of the cut draw the skin of the tail sharply forward for half an inch to take up what it has lengthened by stretching, and sew it fast by several long cross-stitches. At the last moment fill in a little more tow at the base of the tail, sew up the opening, and cut off the thread. The most difficult part of the whole operation is now before us. It now remains to put the specimen on a perch, pin the wings fast to the body, adjust the feathers and wind them down, stuff the head, pin the tail, and put in the eyes.
With a piece of pine board four inches square, and two round pine sticks, each about three inches long, make a rough T perch, similar to the one standing vacant on the table in Plate XII. The cross-piece should not be too large for the bird's feet to grasp comfortably. With a small gimlet, or awl, bore two holes in the cross-bar, on a slant, about an inch apart, run the leg-wires through them, perch the bird naturally, and twist the wires together once underneath, to hold it firmly. Study a living bird or a good picture, and give your specimen a correct and natural attitude.
Cut a piece of wire five inches long, sharpen one end, bend it into a T shape, as in Fig. 50, and run the sharp end through the base of the tail underneath, and on up into the body. The tail feathers are to rest on and be evenly supported by the cross part at the lower end, which may be either straight or curved, as occasion requires.
With the small forceps, plume and dress the feathers all over the bird, catching them near the root, a bunch at a time, and pulling them into place where necessary. Work them against the grain by lifting them up and letting them fall back into place. It will be a great help if you can at this stage procure a dead bird of the same kind to examine, and see precisely how the feathers lie. One such specimen will aid you more than pages of description.
It often happens that the back, breast, or side of the bird is not quite full enough at some point, or, in other words, is too hollow. Now is the time to remedy such defects. Lift the wing and cut a slit lengthwise in the skin of the body underneath it, and through this opening insert fine clipped tow wherever needed. The forceps is the best instrument to use in doing this. The opening under the wing is of great importance, for it gives you command of one entire side of the bird's body. You can by means of this hole fill out the back, breast, or shoulders, if not full enough, and make other important changes in the bird's form. There is no need to sew up the opening when you have finished, for when the wing is pinned in place it will be entirely hidden.
The wings must be fastened to the body before the feathers can be fully adjusted. Cut six small wires, each two inches long, and sharpen at one end. Let us wire the left wing first. Hold it between the left thumb and forefinger, and with the right hand push the point of one of the small wires through the angle of the wing, commonly called the shoulder. When the point is well through, hold the wing in place against the body, adjust it with great care, and when you see that the feathers of the shoulder fall properly over the angle of the wing, push the wire through into the excelsior body until it holds firmly. Push another wire through at the base of the large quills (primaries), and another through the upper part of the wing, just below where it leaves the body. These wires are well shown in Fig. 52. The wing now fits closely against the body, and the feathers fall over it smoothly, so as to completely cover the upper part of it.
Wire the other wing in the same way, taking great care that one is not placed farther ahead than the other, nor farther up or down on the body. The tips of the wings should touch each other exactly at the point. Look at your bird from all sides before finally securing the second wing.
With the wings firmly wired and the feathers nicely adjusted, we next proceed to stuff the head. With the scissors cut up some fine tow or cotton, and by inserting it through the mouth with the forceps, a pinch at a time, fill out around the back and sides of the head, the upper part of the neck and the throat. Do not fill the skin too full, and take care that both sides of the head are precisely the same shape and size. Take plenty of time and do your work nicely.
When the head has been properly filled out, fill in each eye-socket with a little soft clay or putty, insert the glass eyes, and embed them in it. Study the eyes of your dead bird, and imitate their appearance and position with those of your mounted specimen. It is a good plan to put a drop of mucilage around the inside of each eyelid and thus gum it down upon the glass eye. Be sure that the eyes are exactly opposite one another, and that one is not higher nor farther back than the other.
Fasten the mandibles together by thrusting a pin up through the lower mandible into the skull, or else by passing a pin through the upper mandible at the nostrils and tying around the bill behind it with a thread.
It now remains to wind down the feathers with thread to give the bird the exact outline we desire, and to make the feathers lie smoothly. Attend to this with the closest attention and care, for on the success of this process depends the smoothness of your specimen when finished.
[a]Fig. 52.]—The Winding of the Bird.
The best method of winding ever known is that developed and practised by Mr. F.S. Webster, whose wonderful skill in the treatment of birds is already widely known. His birds are marvels of smoothness and symmetry, and I take great pleasure in describing his method of winding as the best known. First make six hook-wires by filing six pieces of wire, each two inches long, to a sharp point at one end, and bending the other with the pliers in the form of a double hook. (See Fig. 52.) Insert three of these in a line along the middle of the back, and two along the middle of the breast, as seen in the cut. The wing-wires are not to be cut off, but left sticking out for half an inch. The bird is now divided into equal halves, and there are three wing-wires on each side, so that it will not be very difficult to wind both sides alike.
Now take a spool of white thread, No. 40, fasten the end to the hook-wire on the top of the back; take the base of the pedestal in the left hand and proceed to wind down the feathers. By means of the hook-wires you can wind from point to point at will, so as to bind down the feathers where they lie too high, and skip them entirely where they lie low enough. Get the general outline of the bird first, and apply the thread with a light and skilful touch, so that it will not make creases in the bird. A little practice will enable one to wind a bird with gratifying success.
The next thing is to spread the feathers of the tail evenly, and pin them between two strips of thin card-board placed crosswise to hold the feathers in position until they dry.
Lastly, adjust the toes so that they grasp the perch properly, and set the specimen away to dry where it will not be touched. In about two or three weeks, when it is thoroughly dry, cut the threads off with a pair of scissors, pull out the hook-wires, cut off the projecting ends of the wing-wires close down to the wing, and cut off the wire at the top of the head close down into the feathers.
Mix a little varnish and turpentine together in equal parts, and with a paint-brush paint the feet and bill in case they happen to require it. Clean the eyes and rub them until they shine. You can perch the specimen now permanently on the artificial twig, turned T perch, or natural twig, or whatever else you have had in mind. In doing this, clinch the leg-wires together underneath the perch, and cut off the ends so that no portion of the wire will show. Be neat in everything, and study to make the bird look alive.
Do not be discouraged if your first bird is a dead failure, nor even if your first dozen birds are fit only for immediate destruction. If you get discouraged because your first attempt at anything is not a complete success, you are not fit to succeed. Better never begin than stop short of success. If you have a love for taxidermy, and the patience and perseverance to back it up, you are bound to succeed.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
MOUNTING LARGE BIRDS.
After all that has been said in regard to mounting small birds, and relaxing and cleaning dry bird skins, there remains but little to add on the subject of bird-mounting, and that little relates to large birds. For all birds, up to the emu and ostrich, the principles remain about the same as those illustrated in the mounting of a robin. Moreover, the mounting of birds is now so generally understood it is unnecessary to dwell at great length on this subject.
Professor L.L. Dyche has called my attention to the great desirability of taking a series of measurements of every large bird before it is skinned, and another series of the skinned body, as a check on possible errors in making the false body and in mounting. The idea is a good one, and the following are the measurements that should be taken:
Before Skinning.—Total length; distance from angle of wing at the carpal joint to the eye; distance from the end of the closed wing to the tip of the tail; distance from the base of the middle toe to the carpal joint of the wing.
Measurements of the Skinned Carcass.—Length of the body; length of the neck; circumference of the body around the breast; circumference around the abdomen.
The notes should also state whether the body and the neck are respectively round or flat.
The False Body.—In starting out to make a body for a large bird, particularly one with a long neck, take a piece of wood about the size of a large ear of corn, and much the same shape, through one end of which pass one end of the neck-wire and firmly staple it down. The purpose of this is to give the firmest attachment possible for the neck. The false body is then made by firmly winding successive layers or bunches of excelsior or straw upon this wooden core, and binding each successive layer down with fine twine from start to finish, so that the finished body shall be firm enough. If the false body is not made hard enough, the leg-wires can not be firmly fastened, and the bird will "wabble."
If you have the fleshy body before you, or even the measurements of it, it will be easy enough to reproduce its form and size. It is desirable to copy the form of the natural body as closely as possible, which in many cases necessitates the use of a long needle to sew through and through it, in reproducing certain hollows and corresponding elevations. Professor Dyche lays great stress upon this point, and always makes the false body of a bird with such care and attention to every detail of form that when the skin is put over it it fits perfectly, the feathers fall into position and lie properly, no extra filling being necessary anywhere save at the tail; and, what is more, he considers that it is unnecessary to wind down the plumage with thread. The most life-like snowy owl I have ever seen is one which Professor Dyche mounted for me as a practical demonstration of his method, the virtue of which was thus handsomely proven. The skin was the same as a fresh one, having been made less than a year, and the excelsior body was made to fit it without the aid of measurements. As the result of repeated ocular demonstration, I am convinced that Professor Dyche's method of making every body with extreme care, as to form and details, is well worthy of universal adoption.
The necessity of removing the tendons from the legs of all large birds has already been mentioned. When this has been done, the wiring of the leg is an easy matter, for the wire will take the place of the tendon so perfectly that there will be no outward sign of its presence. Use as large leg-wires as you can without disfiguring the leg of the bird.
When any animal is mounted in a walking attitude, the foot which is represented in the act of leaving the ground must always have its centre well elevated, and only the toes touching. This being the case, surely no intelligent taxidermist will ever be guilty of so unpardonable an offence against the eye as to run the supporting-iron straight down from the ball of the foot to the pedestal, with a ghastly section of it exposed to view. No matter how you manage it, the iron must follow the bones of the foot until it reaches the toes, and then it can be bent down to a perpendicular line and passed through the pedestal, always out of sight.
PLATE XIII.
[a]Mounted Bird, with Interior Structure Exposed.]
In all but the largest birds, the leg-wires are fastened in the body in precisely the same way as described and illustrated in the previous chapter, except that it requires stouter pliers and more strength to bend them and clinch them firmly in the body. In inserting the leg-wires in the artificial body, be sure to enter them about the middle of the body, on each side, and not near the tail, as nearly all beginners are prone to do. This is by all odds the commonest and worst fault in mounted birds that fall short of perfection. It arises from the fact that the beginner makes the mistake of entering the leg-wires at the same point where the bird's humerus joins the pelvis, which is too far back by just one-third of the length of the entire body! The humerus is not represented on your wire at all, and the wire should enter the body precisely where the knee-joint comes in the living bird. The flesh and bone of the thigh is made up (or should be, at least) on the artificial body, not on your leg-wire. Lay out a dead bird in a walking attitude, or study a skeleton (see Fig. 70), and see where the knee-joint comes; then you will never again be in danger of spoiling a bird by making its legs come out from under its tail.
In mounting large birds, the sizes of the wires I have used were as follows: Great horned owl, No. 8 or 9; bald eagle, No. 7 or 8; peacock, No. 7; great blue heron, No. 6; sandhill crane, No. 5.
An ostrich or emu requires a manikin constructed on the same principles as that built for the tiger, except that each leg-rod should have two iron squares instead of one. The upper extremity of the leg-rod is clamped tightly to one square, with two nuts, as usual; but in addition to this there should be a second square with a hole in its short arm large enough for the smooth rod to slip through, and this should be screwed to the body-board as low down as the anatomy of the bird will allow. The object of this second iron is to prevent the bipedal specimen from swaying and leaning over, as it would otherwise be very apt to do.
Inasmuch as the legs of an ostrich or emu always require to be cut open and completely skinned, the manikin method is perfectly adapted to their wants. If the skin is so shrunken that it requires vigorous stretching, its body must be stuffed with straw after the neck and legs have been made and joined to a centre-board, precisely as directed for long-haired mammals above medium size. I may also remark in this connection that I have seen both the complete skin and skeleton of a large ostrich preserved and mounted to stand side by side, but I pitied the operator when he had to make a full set of bones for the legs and feet, and a wooden skull with the horny shell of the beak fastened upon it. At one stage of the proceedings the outlook for the skin seemed anything but promising, and on the whole I would not advise anyone save an expert to attempt a similar task.
Mounting Birds with Wings Spread.—In the first place, each wing must have a wire large enough to adequately support it. This should be straight, bright, well-oiled, and filed sharp at both ends. One end is to be inserted inside the skin, passed along next to the wing-bones as far as the carpal joint, from thence it is forced on as far as possible between the skin and the under surface of the metacarpal bones until it emerges from the feathers not far from the end of the fleshy portion of the wing. The wing must be so straight that the wire can be slipped through it freely backward and forward. It must next be passed through the artificial body at the point where the upper end of the humerus is attached to the coracoid in the complete skeleton, and very firmly clinched in the same way as described for the leg-wires. Then lay the bird upon its back, place the wing exactly in position, bend the wing-wires so they will fit snugly against the wing-bones, and tie them firmly down. After that, the middle joint of each wing is to be poisoned, stuffed with fine tow, and sewn up neatly. Of course the wings can not be given their correct elevation and pose until the bird is placed firmly upon its temporary perch, unless it is to be represented as flying.
Now is the time to properly dispose of the feet. If the talons are to be grasping any kind of prey, the object must be placed at once, before the feet begin to dry. If the bird is to be in full flight, they must be drawn up, clinched, and almost concealed in the feathers. To keep the feathers of a spread wing in place while the specimen is drying, thrust a long, sharpened wire into the body under the wing, and another on top, bend both until they conform to the curve of the wing, twist their outer ends together, and then slip under each wire a long, narrow strip of pasteboard. Such a specimen requires constant watching lest something get awry by accident, and dry so. The winding of a bird with its wings spread, to say nothing of laying the plumage, is a difficult and delicate matter, and the chances are that he who takes the greatest pains will produce the best bird.
[a]Fig. 53.]—Cast of the Neck and Windpipe of a Heron.
Making the Neck of a Heron.—Ordinarily the anatomy of a bird is well concealed by its feathers, but to this rule the neck of a heron is a marked exception. In this remarkable member there is room for the most ambitious operator to show his skill. The neck is very long, very thin and flat, the joints of the vertebræ often show very plainly, and the windpipe has a way of shifting over the sides of the neck in a most free-and-easy way. (See Fig. 53.) If you wish to mount a bird that will show your skill to the best advantage, by all means choose a heron, and mount him in a stooping posture, with his head thrown back, in the act of spearing a fish with his sharp beak.
One of the artistic triumphs of the New York exhibition of the Society of American Taxidermists was Mr. F.S. Webster's "Wounded Heron," which was awarded a specialty medal as being one of the best pieces in the entire exhibition. It was presented by Mr. Webster to the National Museum, for the Society's exhibit, and is represented in Plate XVI.
Ordinarily you can make a good neck for a heron by taking two wires of suitable length, winding fine tow very smoothly and evenly around each one until it has attained very nearly the required thickness of the neck, then putting the two together and winding a thin, even layer of fine, soft tow around both. This doubles the width of the neck, without materially increasing its thickness. The necks of some herons are so excessively wide and thin that it requires three tow-wrapped wires wound together thus to give the necessary width. All this winding should be done quite firmly, and when finished, if the neck is of the right size, it should be wrapped with spool cotton from end to end to make it keep its shape. One of the neck-wires should be thrust through the skull, but the end of the other should be bent down, and (if the beak is to be closed) passed out of the throat, into the mouth, one-third of the way to the tip of the beak.
If, however, you wish to produce a prize bird and challenge criticism, then make a neck which will show the joints of the vertebræ, and show them plainly and strikingly. Now there may be a dozen different ways in which that could be done, but the best is to make the neck over a hard skeleton that will show its joints willy-nilly. Your best plan is to clean the neck vertebræ without disjointing them, tie your neck-wire firmly underneath them, wrap with fine tow to replace the flesh, bind down with thread, and cover all at the last moment with clay. The windpipe is easily reproduced by wrapping fine tow around a small annealed wire, and then sewing it in its place on the neck. If you have not the cervical vertebræ, the next best thing is to make them roughly and quickly out of wood, wire them together, and use as you would the real bones. The reason why this is necessary to success is that it is very difficult to make a wire bend in angles instead of curves after it has been wrapped with tow and inserted in the neck of the bird.
Setting the Eyes.—On this point I have always been at war with most of my taxidermic friends. They insist that it is not best to insert the eyes in a bird as soon as it is finished otherwise, but leave the bird to dry without them. Afterward, they insert wet cotton, soften the eyelids, and then insert the clay backing and the eyes. They claim that this is necessary to prevent the skin from being drawn away from the eye by shrinkage in the general drying.
I hold that it is best to set the eyes at once, before the bird dries, in order to secure the greatest degree of elasticity in shaping the eyelids, and thereby have a more perfect mastery of the situation. But having seen my friends secure as good results by their method as I do by mine, I naturally conclude that it is only a matter of personal preference, and either way is good enough.
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
CLEANING THE PLUMAGE OF BIRDS.
I shall never forget how vainly I sought, when a lonesome and isolated amateur, to find somewhere in print some useful information about how to remove grease, dirt, and blood-stains from the plumage of birds. I remember well my disgust and anger at the makers of the so-called "complete" manuals of taxidermy that left me groping in Egyptian darkness on that subject, and most others also; and I registered a solemn vow that should I ever write on taxidermy I would do my best to afford some practical information on cleaning the plumage of birds.
As has been previously stated, the time to clean the plumage of a bird is while you are making up the fresh skin (Chapter VI.), before the skin has been laid away to dry, before the blood dries and imparts a permanent stain (to white feathers, at least), and before the oil has had a chance to ooze out into the feathers to gather dirt, and presently form a nasty, yellow oil-cake upon the skin. In cleaning the skin of a fat or oily bird, scrape all the grease from the inside of the skin, and absorb it with corn meal or plaster Paris. Scrape the skin until it looks as if the feathers are about to fall out, until no more oil is raised, and then you may call it clean. When you have done this, you need not fear that any oil will ever exude upon the feathers.
Fresh Specimens.—If a freshly killed bird has blood upon its plumage, separate the bloody feathers from the others, lift them on your fingers, and with warm water and a sponge gently sponge them off. Give the blood a little time to soften, and when the feathers are as clean as you can get them with water, wipe them as dry as you can, then sponge them over with clear spirits of turpentine or benzine, and absorb this with plaster Paris. The manner of managing plaster Paris will be described in detail in another paragraph.
Very often the plumage of a freshly killed swan, gull, or duck, becomes so covered with dirt, blood, and grease by the time it reaches the taxidermist that it is a sight to behold. Never mind if it is, you can make it as good as new, in every respect, so far as cleanliness is concerned. The thing to do is to skin the bird, and clean the skin before either mounting it or making it up as a skin. The cleaning is often made easier, however, by hastily filling the loose skin with excelsior or tow, to give a firm foundation to work upon when cleaning the plumage.
If you have no turpentine, as will probably happen to you many a time when you least expect it, take some warm water, as warm as you can bear your hand in, rub some castile soap in it, and with a sponge, or a soft cotton cloth, wash the soiled feathers. Do not scrub them as you would a greasy floor, and utterly destroy the perfect set of the feathers, but sponge them with the grain, as far as possible, treating them as a compact layer. Now, if you have turpentine, wipe the feathers as dry as you can, and give them a sponging with that, for they will come out better from the plaster Paris than otherwise. When the plaster is put upon feathers that are wet with water, it acts too quickly in its drying, and the feathers are often dried before they have had time to become fluffy as in life. But if you have no turpentine, you must finish without it. Whichever liquid you use, at the finish fill the feathers full of plaster Paris, and almost immediately lift the bird and beat it gently to knock out the saturated plaster. That done, put on more plaster, filling the feathers full of it down to their very roots, and presently whip that out also. By the time you have made the third application, the feathers are almost dry, and the plaster falls out almost dry also. Now is your time to whip the feathers with a supple switch, or a light filler of stiff wire, to make each bedraggled feather fluff up at the base of its shaft, and spread its web for all it is worth. This treatment is also vitally necessary to knock the plaster out of the plumage. Work the feathers with your long forceps, lifting them up a bunch at a time and letting them fall back into place. By this time the plaster flies out in a cloud of white dust, and the whipping of the feathers must be kept up without intermission until the plaster is all out. If any plaster remains in the feathers, you may count with certainty that it will always be sifting out upon the pedestal, and, what is even worse, if the plumage is black, or dark-colored, it will impart to it a gray and dusty appearance.
Caution.—Remember that if you leave the first application of plaster, or even the second, too long in the feathers it will "set" or harden there, and make you wish you were dead before you get it out.
Dry Skins.—The hardest subjects to deal with are old, dry skins. While fresh, fat is merely so much clean oil smeared on the feathers. An old, dry duck, goose, swan, penguin, auk, or albatross skin is liable to have the feathers of the breast and abdomen all caked together in a solid mass of rancid, yellow grease, to which time has added a quantity of museum dirt. In mounting one of the charming specimens of this too numerous class, it is not always safe to clean the feathers before inserting the body. There is danger that the skin will go to pieces. For this, and other reasons, the skin should be scraped clean inside, poisoned, furnished with a body, and sewn up before you attempt to clean the feathers.
When feathers are badly caked with old, dry grease, it is an excellent plan to apply a jet of steam to the afflicted region, which quickly warms and moistens the grease, and allows the turpentine to cut it in less than half the time it would otherwise require. There is nothing that starts dry grease as quickly as a little well-directed steam; but steam is a powerful shrinking agency, and it must be used with judgment.
Usually an old skin is so dirty that it requires to be "plastered" all over. If you have no steam, attack the greasy portions first with warm water (but no soap), to warm up the grease and soften it. Time and patience are both necessary. Next, wipe off the water, and with a wad of cotton cloth, tow, or cotton batting, dip from your dish of turpentine, and apply it as a wash upon the feathers, always rubbing with the grain, of course. When, after repeated applications, you see that the turpentine has dissolved the grease to quite an extent, go rapidly over the remainder of the bird, then lay it down upon a sheet of heavy paper, upon its back, and cover it completely with plaster Paris. It takes two or three quarts to do this usually, and for a swan it requires a pailful.
As soon as the plaster has had time to absorb the greasy turpentine, which it does in about a minute, lift the bird from its burial-place, and holding it head upward hit it several sharp blows with a light stick to knock the plaster out of the feathers. Devote from three to five minutes to this, then examine the feathers and see whether they are perfectly clean. Most likely they are not, if it is a case of old grease, and a repetition of the dose is necessary. Start again with your wash of turpentine and do precisely as before (without the use of any water). If this does not bring the feathers out clean and white from roots to tips, then give it a third going over, with unabated vigor and thoroughness. The third time is usually "the charm," even with the worst cases. This time the plaster must be thoroughly beaten out of the feathers, even if takes you an hour to accomplish it.
All this is rather disagreeable work. Of course you will put on old clothes and get out doors to windward of your bird while beating it, so that the plaster will fly off upon some other fellow. Soft feathers may be handled more carelessly than the stiffer sorts. Of course great care must be taken to not separate the web of the tail and wing feathers, nor to break the shafts of even the small ones. Beware getting any of the body feathers twisted during this operation, or they will not lie down where they belong.
Benzine can be used instead of turpentine in cleaning plumage, but it is too volatile, and evaporates too quickly to render the best service.
It is practically useless to attempt to remove clotted blood from the feathers of old dry skins. Even if by persistent effort the blood itself is removed, it leaves a lasting stain upon the feathers, and they are also permanently awry. The universal custom with taxidermists in such case is to obey the (paraphrased) scriptural injunction—if a feather offend thee, pluck it out. If this course leaves a vacancy in the plumage, steal a perfect feather from some suitable portion of the bird's body, and glue it fast in the place of the missing one. Fortunately, however, collectors have about ceased to make up skins to dry with blood upon them, and there is not much trouble to apprehend hereafter from that source.
[CHAPTER XXV.]
MOUNTING REPTILES.
Ophidia: The Serpents.—There are several methods of mounting snakes, but only one that I can recommend. Such processes as ramming a rubber-like snake skin full of sawdust, or cotton, or tow, are to be mentioned only to be condemned. In my opinion, the only proper way to mount a serpent is to make a manikin of tow, carefully wound on a wire and afterward shaped with thread, and cover it with clay at the finish. It is necessary to attach small wires to the body-wire at given intervals, so that they can be passed down through the pedestal, and afford a means by which a finished specimen may be drawn down and made to lie naturally.
A manikin for a large snake, like an anaconda or python, is best made of excelsior, and its exact form secured by sewing through it with a needle. In the field notes printed in Chapter III. something may be learned of the form of the python.
If a snake is "stuffed," it stretches the scales apart most unnaturally, and never looks like life. For this reason, the clay-covered manikin is necessary, in order that any excess of skin may be modeled down upon it, and the scales be made to form an unbroken covering.
Lacertilia: The Lizards.—With the exception of the iguana, the gila monster, mastigure, and a few others, the lizards are so small and slender, and have tails so tapering out into thin air that they are altogether too small to be mounted by the ordinary methods of taxidermy. The finest method ever devised for the preservation and display of small reptiles and batrachians is that adopted by the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass. Each specimen is preserved in clear spirits in a jar by itself, and instead of being dropped in head first to sink or swim, and tie itself into a bow-knot if it can, the reptile is placed (in the flesh) on a thin, rectangular slab of plaster Paris or cement, of the tint best suited to the display of the specimen. The object is placed in a life-like attitude and held in place by threads which pass through holes in the slab and tie the feet down securely. The accompanying illustration (Fig. 54), drawn from a specimen, and the following description, both of which have been kindly furnished me by Mr. Samuel Garman, Curator of Reptiles, Museum of Comparative Zoology, will enable any intelligent preparator to adopt this admirable method:
[a]Fig. 54.]—Method of Mounting Alcoholic Reptiles at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
"It was in 1875 we began to mount the reptiles and batrachians of the Museum of Comparative Zoology on tablets, in alcohol. Before that date they had been stuffed and dried, a method which proved rather unsatisfactory, especially so in regard to color, and the shrivelling of digits and tails. However varied at first, the appearance soon became uniform and dusty. Mounting in the alcohol does away with the most serious objections; we can give the specimens life-like attitudes, or arrange them in groups as if playing, courting, or fighting; and the liquid heightens their beauty, as the water does that of the pebble at the seashore, while ravages of insects are entirely out of the question.
"The tablets are made of plaster Paris, or if a harder one with finer finish is desired, of cement mixed with water and spread on a glass plate to set. Holes are bored through them wherever necessary to fasten the specimen, which is simply tied on. With the tints used in fresco painting they are colored to suit. Experiments now under way convince me there is less fading on plates of certain colors than on the white ones. For black tablets, common slate is good. A mixture of plaster and cement makes a fine quality."
The larger lizards are generally so round and plump-bodied they may very properly be mounted with tow and clay legs, and a body-filling of clean and soft chopped tow, the same as small mammals. If one is encountered which has a high, sharp, spinal crest, which cannot be reproduced with loose filling, then it is necessary to make the legs and tail, wire all together, and make an excelsior manikin in two halves, so that each side may be inserted in the body independently, and then the two may be sewed together and covered with clay as necessary.
At Professor Ward's celebrated establishment I once saw Mr. Webster remove the entire skeleton from a Hatteria punctata, a rare New Zealand lizard about sixteen inches in length, replace the leg bones and skull with wooden counterfeits, and successfully mount the skin. This was quite a feat, and was the only instance of the kind that ever came to my knowledge. The chief difficulty lay in removing the skull from the skin, which grew tightly upon it, and in successfully replacing it with a wooden imitation.
Crocodilia: The Crocodiles and Alligators.—These great saurians—thick-hided, case-hardened, and always fat—require no carefully made manikins, no clay save in the small ones, nor very gentle treatment of any kind, unless the specimens happen to be young and tender. Small crocodilians should be mounted in the same way as the larger lizards, using clay next to the skin of the body and tail. I once achieved success with a tiny alligator, and delighted its bereaved owner, by filling it with clay on a core of excelsior, and modeling the form into perfect shape.
Large saurians should be mounted on the same general plan as wolves and small bears, viz., by cutting the leg-irons long, passing the inner ends through a rather small centre board, bending them down to the wood, and fastening with staples. Of course the leg-irons must fasten underneath the pedestal by means of nuts. The legs are made of tow, and so is the tail, which must have in its centre a stout iron rod, cut about four inches shorter than the end of the tail to allow for shrinkage. At two or three points equidistant from the end of the tail, and from each other, fasten a stout wire to the tail rod, so that when the specimen is finished these wires can be passed down through holes bored in the pedestal, and used to draw the tail down tightly and hold it there. If this is forgotten the tail will spring up in spite of you, and show daylight underneath, which never happens with the tail of a living saurian.
As to attitude, one or two hints will suffice. A live saurian, either crawling or at rest, nearly always carries his legs well up to his body. Do not spread his legs far out, but bend them up rather close to the animal's body, as if he expected to use them to walk with. The body should always rest down upon the ground. Give the tail two or three curves sidewise to relieve its stiffness. The head should be held well up, but the elevation should be given by the neck alone, with the head itself in a horizontal position, turned a trifle to the right or left to avoid extreme stiffness in the attitude.
When your large alligator has been put together, suspend it from the ceiling, bottom upward, and stuff the thick part of the tail, the body, and the neck with straw. Begin at the end of the tail, and fill and sew up until the head is reached. It is necessary to use stout and very sharp glover's needles of large size in sewing through the horny-hide of an old saurian, and the thread should be the best of linen twine, doubled and waxed until it is in the best possible condition for holding. Sometimes a skin is so horny it is necessary to pierce holes for the needle with an awl. The shrinking power of a big saurian is something fearful to behold, therefore prepare your seams accordingly.
The centre-board of the body should be placed low enough that two screw-bolts, six inches long, may be put through the pedestal from underneath, and screwed into the board to bring the body of the animal down upon the pedestal as closely as possible, and also to hold it more securely. Of course, each leg-iron must pass downward through the foot, and fasten with a nut underneath the pedestal.
The tongue of a saurian is not free, but the skin may be removed from its upper surface, the flesh replaced with clay, and the skin sewed down again. The color of the tongue and roof of the mouth of a saurian is pale yellow, a little lighter than Naples yellow, but never pink. In young specimens the inside of the mouth is white.
Bear in mind this fact, that the eye of an alligator or crocodile is of a dark greenish color, and the pupil is vertical.
The thin serrated scales, which form the crest of the tail, must be clamped firmly between thick pieces of card-board while they are drying, so that they will retain their proper shape and erectness, for otherwise they will curl up and become very unsightly.
After a saurian has dried properly, and has been "machéd," it should be varnished all over with a coat of white varnish and turpentine, to bring out the colors.
If the teeth of an alligator need to be cleaned and whitened, brush them with muriatic acid, washing it off again almost immediately with plenty of clear water.
Chelonia: The Turtles.—This group embraces the sea-turtles, having the fore limbs developed as long, flat, triangular flippers, with large head, small under shell, and with head and flippers non-retractile,—the terrapins, soft-shelled turtles, and tortoises. Of the large, sea-going species, our ocean waters produce the huge leather-back or harp-turtle, the loggerhead, next in size, the green turtle and the hawksbill, which last yields the valuable tortoise-shell of commerce. To the taxidermist, a fresh hawksbill to be mounted is a thing of beauty and a joy forever; the smooth and succulent green turtle is also a welcome guest; the big loggerhead is a serious affair, and the huge, lumbering, greasy 800-pound leather-back is a first class calamity. Shun him, unless there is plenty of money behind him. I once had the misfortune to be chief mourner over a leather-back which pulled down 940 pounds dead weight—mostly oil.
"We conquered, but Bozzaris fell,"
vowing that neither gold nor glory (neither of which is yielded by Sphargis coriacea) should ever again tempt us to "strike oil" in that manner. The soft and gelatinous shell of that monster dripped clear oil for three months, and actually yielded several gallons.
PLATE XIV.
[a]Mounting an Alligator.—Last Stage.]
Fig. 19 shows the underside of a turtle, and the dotted line indicates where the cut has been made in the skin near the posterior edge of the plastron, where the shell bridge that unites the upper with the under shell has been sawn through with a small saw. The process of skinning such a subject has been already described, and the process of mounting is to be carried out on precisely the same general principles as described and illustrated in the mounting of mammals with long hair, with but slight variations.
After the legs and neck have been made with tow, the tow wrapping should be covered with a quarter of an inch of soft clay, so the skin can afterward be modeled down upon it, either smoothly or wrinkled, as in life. The body should be stuffed with straw to keep the shell from collapsing while drying. The divided portions of the shell must then be joined and wired together firmly with soft brass wires passed through small holes, as shown in the figure. Of course, the cuts in the skin must be sewn up neatly but firmly.
When the specimen has been placed on its pedestal, it then remains to shape the legs, neck, and feet, which the soft clay underneath renders quite easy. Folds and wrinkles in the skin must be exaggerated, to provide for what is sure to disappear by shrinkage in drying.
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
MOUNTING FISHES.
General Observations.—Judging from specimens generally, it would seem that taxidermists, the world over, either do not know how to mount fish specimens with the same degree of excellence as mammals and birds, or else they are universally slighted by intention. Certain it is, that in nearly every large zoological museum the stuffed fishes are the least attractive, and the least like life of all the vertebrates. In many instances the reptiles are not far behind in unsightliness, although as a rule they are a little more life-like than the fishes. In only one natural history museum out of twenty-seven have I found a collection of stuffed fishes which surpassed in number and quality of specimens the collection of birds and mammals, and formed the most attractive feature of the entire museum. That fish collection is to be seen in the Government Museum at Madras, India.
The specimens were all mounted while fresh from the ocean, which, of course, has been a great advantage to the taxidermist. I was somewhat surprised to learn that the taxidermist in question was an Indian native, named P. Anthony Pillay, because East Indian natives are, almost without exception, very indifferent taxidermists.
None of the specimens are mounted on standards, but either lie flat in table cases, or, if too large for that, hang against the wall. The common scaly fishes always lie upon one side, usually the right, with tail curved upward.
Mr. Pillay assured me that the exquisite smoothness of his specimens was due to the use of silk cotton as a filling material, plucked from the pod and cleaned by hand. His scale fishes and sharks were very life-like, but his rays and ray-like Rhinobati were somewhat faulty. Being filled with fibrous material, they lacked that extreme flatness so characteristic of fishes of this type.
Numerous methods for the preparation of fishes have been devised. In the collection in the National Museum made by the Society of American Taxidermists there is a series of six specimens, representing five different methods, mostly bad. One is a fish carved in wood and painted; another is a flimsy paper cast of Dutch extraction; a third is a painted plaster cast; the fourth is a half fish, or fish medallion, and the fifth is an entire stuffed fish. It is necessary to add, however, that the last-mentioned specimen falls far short of properly representing its class—the most common of all in museums. In disposing of this subject it is not my purpose to waste time in the discussion of obsolete and valueless methods, but to describe only those of practical utility.
Mounting Small and Medium-sized Fishes with Scales.—The process of skinning a fish has been described in a previous chapter, and on this subject but few other points remain to be noticed. These are the following:
From some fishes the scales fall off so very easily while they are being skinned and mounted, it is necessary to wipe the specimen dry, and before starting to remove the skin, paste a piece of thin but tough writing-paper over the whole fish excepting the fins, and let it dry before proceeding further. With a pen, line out the course of the opening cut, and make a mark across it here and there to guide you in joining the edges again after mounting. This paper covering will fully protect the scales from displacement, and it is to remain on until the mounting is completed, when its removal is easily accomplished with water and a sponge.
On the great majority of scaled fishes, however, the scales are sufficiently persistent that the above is unnecessary. But keep the fish wet while you are at work upon it, and handle it with care and delicacy. If you let the scales get dry, their edges begin at once to curl up, which must not be permitted.
It is generally of great advantage to allow the skin of a fish to lie over night in spirits (two parts of ninety-five per cent alcohol to one of water) for the sake of curing and toughening the integument, and curing whatever particles of flesh may chance to remain in the skull.
After having removed the skin, it must be cleaned most carefully. With a keen-bladed knife, pare and scrape off all the adherent flesh from the skin, cut out the gills, and remove the flesh from the interior of the skull, and the base of the fins. Of course the eyes must come out also. With a stout pair of scissors trim off the projecting bases of the rays of the dorsal and anal fins, so that the fin itself may set squarely upon the top of the centre-board.
I will now describe, step by step, the entire process of mounting a fish by what I consider the simplest, easiest, and most practical method known. Be advised in the beginning, however, that you can not mount fishes on nice brass standards with nothing at all in the way of special materials and tools. You must have an assortment of hard brass wire, Nos. 3 to 10, a hack-saw, some brass rosettes, a small die for cutting threads on brass wire, and taps of corresponding sizes for cutting threads in the brass nuts and rosettes. The outfit is by no means expensive, but it is indispensable if you wish to mount your specimens on standards, and thus have them show off to the finest advantage.
1. Procure a piece of soft wood, pine preferred, and with the skinned body of the fish before you, whittle the wood down to the general shape of the body, but one-fourth smaller in actual size. In Plate IV. the outline a, b, c represents the wooden centre-board, which is really the foundation upon which the mounted specimen is to be constructed.
2. Prepare two small brass standards (e, e), and screw the upper end of each firmly into a gimlet-hole bored into the centre-board at d, d. At the lower end of each standard the thread should be cut for a little more than an inch of its length, and a turned brass rosette screwed on, to rest on top of the pedestal, and hold the rod from slipping down through the hole. Underneath the pedestal a square nut is screwed on tightly. These rods should be exactly perpendicular, and the axis of the fish (an imaginary line running lengthwise through the centre of the bulk), should be as nearly as possible horizontal. A fish mounted with its tail too high in the air seems to be taking a header, and when the reverse is the case, it suggests a ship sinking stern foremost.
3. Having thoroughly cleaned the inside of the skin, anoint it liberally with arsenical soap, or if you have not that, with a plentiful sprinkling of powdered arsenic.
4. For the fourth step—filling—I shall describe two very different processes, advising the beginner to make a fair trial of both, and then adopt the one he succeeds best with.
The filling which I infinitely prefer for a fish is clay and chopped tow, mixed together, and used as stiff as may be to work well. Clay which is too soft when used shrinks as the excess of water dries out of it, and is liable to leave an uneven surface. With a flat modeling-tool, coat the centre-board evenly with the clay until you have reproduced the form and size of the fleshy body of the fish. Then put the skin over this, press it down firmly to exclude all air-bubbles, working it from the back downward. When you find that the skin fits perfectly and without any drawing or straining, begin at the tail and sew the skin together, making, as you proceed, a perfect finish of the specimen. Draw the edges closely together, and the more perfectly the scales can be made to hide the opening the better.
The other filling process is to use fine, soft tow, chopped up finely. With a goodly quantity of tow before you, open the fish skin, and with your forceps insert a layer of tow all along the back, and also on the side which lies next to the table. Then put the centre-board in its place, while the skin still lies before you, and with the forceps distribute an equal quantity of tow between the upper side of the board and the skin. Thus a perfect and even cushion of tow is provided to lie between the skin and the board at all points save below. Begin at the tail, and with your needle and thread sew up the skin for an inch or two; then with your small forceps or filler, stuff to the right size and shape the portion that has been sewn up. That done, sew up another section, and stuff as before, proceeding thus until the head is reached and the entire fish has been filled and shaped. Notches must be cut in the skin at the points where the brass rods enter it.
All this time the fish has been kept wet so that the fins are soft and elastic, and the scales are perfectly smooth. The fins must now be spread, and each one enclosed between two bits of pasteboard cut to the right shape, and held firmly together by sticking pins through them around the edge of the fin. Do not on any account stick pins through the fins, or you will afterward have the trouble of filling up the pin-holes. Force the pins through the two thicknesses of pasteboard with your small pliers, and whatever may be the shape, or size, or position of a fin, you must so shape your pasteboard that the fin will be spread, and have the same position it would on a live fish.
6. The last thing at this stage is to mix together equal quantities of white varnish and turpentine, sponge off the fish carefully, removing every particle of clay, tow, or dirt, and varnish it all over. This prevents the scales from curling up when they dry, and it also goes far toward fixing the colors of the fish. The fins are to be varnished afterward when they get dry.
7. While the fish is drying, the eyes should be prepared. Every one knows that the eyes of different genera of fishes vary in shape, size, and color, to as great a degree as do the eyes of quadrupeds. For mounted specimens, one of two things may be done; insert a conventional silver or golden glass eye, or else keep on hand a lot of uncolored fish eyes, and paint each pair from nature, in oil colors of course, to suit the particular specimen it is to adorn. When the paint has had time to dry and harden, cover it with two or three coats of shellac to protect the colors from any changes which might be effected by the material in which the eye is to be set. If the coating of paint is left unprotected, it is very apt to undergo chemical changes, and the eye may thereby be ruined.
8. The eye may be set in clay or putty provided none of the setting material is to be exposed. If the glass eye is smaller than the opening, which is very often the case, set it in fine papier-maché, which must be nicely modeled around the glass, and afterward coated with shellac, and painted.
10. The subject of painting fishes will be considered in a separate chapter.
Simple as it may appear, and really is, the above processes may be applied with slight modifications to even the largest scale fishes, and to the sharks and saw-fishes. Such large subjects as the jewfish require strong iron rods for standards, and the skin may either be mounted over a manikin, made of excelsior tied down upon a central beam, or it may be stuffed with soft straw, which, considering the great thickness of the skin and scales, is quite satisfactory.
Mounting Fish Medallions.—A fish with but one side mounted and exhibited may be called a fish medallion. It may lie flat in a table-case, or be screwed to the back of an upright case, or it may even be set up on standards fastened to it at the back. As a specimen, either to prepare or exhibit, it has its advantages, and I will briefly describe my process.
[a]Fig. 55.]—Medallion of Yellow Pike.
[a]Fig. 56.]—Cross-Section.
We will suppose that our fish is a fresh subject, or an entire specimen from alcohol. The first thing is to procure a pine board of proper thickness, lay the fish flat upon it, and with a pencil mark out its outline. Although only one side of the fish is to show, it is desirable to mount a little more than precisely one-half of it. Therefore, select the side to be displayed, and remove the skin from the other to within a short distance of the median line of the back and abdomen. This extra margin of skin is to give the skin an appearance of entirety and rotundity, rather than flatness such as would be the case if an exact half were represented. The head of the fish must be sawn through with a fine saw, and, of course, the observance of the directions already given will leave the dorsal and anal fins on the portion to be exhibited.
Having carefully skinned, cleaned, and preserved the portion to be exhibited, the centre-board is cut out with a short bevel on the inside, and on the other the full shape of one side of the fish. When this fits the skin properly, the right quantity of clay is put upon it, the skin is then put on, and fastened at the back according to circumstances. With a small fish, the edges of the skin may be sewn together from top to bottom, across the exposed surface of the centre board, but with large specimens it is best to nail the edges to the board.
Mounting Cartilaginous Fishes: Sharks, rays, saw-fish, etc.—The only failures I have ever made during my thirteen years of taxidermic work have been with subjects of this class. I call them failures because, after taking infinite pains and mounting my specimens to the complete satisfaction of all concerned, the best ones, the very ones I had considered most perfect when finished, for two or three years afterward continued to shrink and shrink, until the skin burst open, and the tail and fins warped out of shape by the same process until it was maddening to look upon them.
I once spent a week of diligent labor in mounting over a clay-covered excelsior manikin the skin of a ten-and-a-half foot gray shark (Hexanchus griseus), which came to me in the flesh. It was a beautiful specimen, and I mounted it according to elaborate measurements, and a cast of the head. The result was all that could be desired. Three years later that shark was a sight to behold. Around the body, just back of the gill openings, the skin had burst open in a crack an inch wide. The tail had been ripped open by the terrible strain of shrinkage, so had the seam underneath the belly, and at first the damage seemed beyond repair. We did repair it, however, very fairly, but to me the specimen has ever since been an eyesore.
By the bitterest of experiences I have learned that a shark, ray, or saw-fish is bound to keep shrinking and shrinking, in both length and circumference, from the day it is finished to the crack of doom. The fins and tail will warp and twist out of shape, and I defy any man to prevent it. Since finding it impossible to mount a fish of this class substantially, and have it retain its original size, I have adopted a plan which allows shrinkage. The rod which supports the tail is fastened to the centre-board by two staples so loosely that when the strain of shrinkage comes upon it, it will gradually slip through the staples and allow the specimen to shorten instead of bursting.
It is best not to mount a shark too well. Stuff it with soft straw instead of making a firm manikin, and do not fill the body any harder than is necessary to secure smoothness. As the specimen gets old, and its circumference grows smaller by degrees, and beautifully (?) less, the mass of straw will also shrink to accommodate the lawless tendencies of the skin.
I have successively tried the effect of curing skins of sharks in brine, in alcohol, and in the salt-and-alum bath, but the result is always the same. It is easy enough to mount them to perfection, but to make them remain as mounted for five years is beyond my powers.
The rays are the meanest of all subjects that vex the soul of the taxidermist. Shun them as you would the small-pox or the devil. Such abominable animated pancakes, with razor edges that taper out to infinite nothingness, were never made to be mounted by any process known to mortal man. To mount the skin of a vile ray, and make it really perfect and life-like is to invite infinite shrinkage, rips, tears, warps, defeat, and humiliation at the hands of your envious rivals. If you must mount a ray, by all means get square with it at the start. Stuff his miserable old skin with tow or straw, the more the better. Ram him, cram him "full to the very jaws," like the famous rattlesnake skin that taxidermist Miles Standish stuffed "with powder and bullets." If you can burst him wide open from head to tail, by all means do so, and you may call me your slave for the rest of my life. Make him nice and round, like a balloon, and then no matter what he does afterward to mortify and disgrace you, and to drag your fair standard in the dust, you will always have the satisfaction of knowing you are square with him.
Once when I was young and innocent, I encountered an enormous ray. He was not thrust upon me, for I achieved him—and my own ruin also, at one fell stroke. I mounted him willingly, nay, eagerly, as Phæton mounted his chariot, to show the rest of the world how all rays should be done. I mounted his vast, expansive skin over a clay-covered manikin that had edges like a Damascus razor, and I made him flat. He was flat enough to navigate the Platte River at low water, which even a thick shingle can not do. He was life-like, and likewise was a great triumph. But almost the moment my back was turned upon him forever, he went back on me. I had put him up to stay put, so far as my part was concerned, so he just got mad and literally tore himself to tatters. He became almost a total wreck, and to make my defeat a more genuine and unmitigated crusher, Professor Ward sent word to me, all the way to Washington, that he would sell me that large ray for $5. I never forgave him for that.
The best way to mount a ray is to make a nice plaster cast of it, paint it, and then bury the accursed ray in a compost heap. As a class these fishes are remarkable, and highly interesting, and there is a far greater variety of them than anyone who is not an ichthyologist might suppose. To me there is no other group of fishes more interesting, and, I may add, there is no other group that is, as a general thing, so poorly represented in museum collections. They exhibit all possible intermediate forms between the ordinary shark and the perfectly round, flat ray. The intermediate forms, Rhynobatii and Rhamphobatis, are naturally the most interesting.
PLATE XV.
[a]American Lobster.—Showing Location of Wires.]
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
MOUNTING LOBSTERS AND CRABS.
The following directions were written from the mounting of a large lobster, but apply equally to all crustaceans large enough to be stuffed.
1. Remove the shell of the back (carapax) in one piece, by cutting under its lower edges, and with steel bone-scrapers clean out all the flesh from the body and tail.
2. Take a long, stiff wire (about No. 10 for a lobster), flatten it out at one end, and bend up a quarter of an inch of it, to form a scraper with a sharp chisel edge. Insert this in the legs (or "walking feet"), one by one, and clean out all the flesh they contain, quite to their tips. With a strong syringe inject water into each leg to thoroughly wash out the inside.
3. Take off the "movable claw" from the "big pincer," also make a hole in the joint at A (Plate XV.), and through these two openings remove all the flesh from the large claws, and syringe them out.
4. Having thoroughly cleaned the specimen, either soak it in some liquid poison, such as arsenic water (the easiest to prepare—by dissolving arsenic in boiling water), or a corrosive sublimate solution, or else poison it by injecting diluted arsenical soap into the legs, claws, and body with a syringe.
5. Insert in each leg and claw a soft wire of zinc, galvanized iron, or brass, and bend the end in the body at very nearly a right angle (B-B). In large specimens the wire should be wrapped smoothly with a little tow, so that the claws will not be loose upon it.
6. Insert a wire in each feeler as far up as possible, and let the lower end extend well down into the body. To hold the specimen on its pedestal, take another wire, as long as the entire specimen from head to tail, pass one end of it down through the centre of the body, bend the wire down at a right angle, and in the same manner pass the other end down through the middle abdominal segment. The ends are to pass through the pedestal and be clinched below.
7. The claws need not be stuffed.
8. When all the various members have been wired, bend all the inner ends of the wires down in the body, and pour in a lot of plaster Paris, which, as soon as it hardens will hold all the wires in place.
9. Stuff the cavity of the abdominal segments with tow, put what filling is necessary into the thorax, then put the shell back in its place and glue it fast all around the edges.
10. Replace the movable claws, and with glue and cotton fasten them firmly where they belong.
11. Put a wire around the end of each claw to hold it down, or, what is better still, wire it down from the under side in such a way that the wire will not be visible.
12. When the specimen is dry and its colors have partly faded out, procure a fresh specimen of the same species, and with your oil colors paint the shell carefully and artistically from your model. Learn to blend the colors together as nature does in such objects, softening all the lines. When the paint is dry, if the specimen has a dead, opaque appearance, give its surface both lustre and transparency by applying a thin coat of white varnish and turpentine.
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
ORNAMENTAL TAXIDERMY.
Until within a very few years, the taxidermist produced but little purely ornamental work, and the most of that little was rather crude and unattractive. Now, however, decorative pieces are produced in bewildering variety, and many of them are justly regarded as works of art. The productions of the Society of American Taxidermists are now to be seen in thousands of the finest homes in the United States, and in art galleries, both public and private. In all the exhibitions of the Society, the display of "Articles for Ornament or Use" has always been the most attractive feature, and the one which has elicted from visitors the most surprise, admiration, and hard cash. The beautiful exhibits made by Messrs. F.S. Webster and F.A. Lucas, of Washington; Thomas W. Fraine and W.J. Critchley, of Rochester, N.Y.; Mr. and Mrs. George H. Hedley, of Medina, N.Y.; Mr. John Wallace, of New York; David Bruce, of Brockport, N.Y.; and Messrs. F.T. Jencks, and Aldrich & Capen, of Boston, will certainly never be forgotten by those who saw them.
It is impossible to describe here the precise methods by which the various kinds of decorative objects may be produced, and surely in the light of all the methods and details that have already been given, it is unnecessary. It will be sufficient to describe by word and picture the character of the various classes of objects, and leave their production to be worked out according to the principles already laid down. The accompanying plate represents a carefully selected group of decorative objects which were displayed in the New York exhibition of the Society of American Taxidermists, and were afterward presented by their respective owners to the National Museum at Washington, where they are now displayed in the Society's exhibit.
Wall Cases.—The shallow box case with glass front, sheltering one specimen or a group, and garnished with certain accessories, is one of the most popular and pleasing of all pieces of decorative taxidermy. Its evolution is due directly to the desire to protect from destruction the more cherished of the single specimens that first began to grace the homes of the lovers of animated nature. In American homes there are to-day thousands of pretty wall-cases of choice birds mounted with suitable accessories, either natural or artificial, many with painted backgrounds, and an equal number without. There are also hundreds of cases of small mammals mounted in the same way.
Artificial Leaves.—The accessories most available are grasses and ferns carefully pressed, dried, and painted green, and set in the foundation work. Natural moss is used in the same way, and for bushes with foliage, artificial leaves are easily procured and wired on to the twigs of the branch that has been selected for use. These can be procured of any first-class dealer in taxidermists' supplies, or at large artificial flower establishments. If leaves of some special kind are desired, or leaves in great quantity, it will be best to procure them direct of C. Pelletier, 135 Wooster Street, New York City, who has supplied me for eight years. The cost of leaves varies from 25 cents to $2.00 per gross; and for some kinds even more.
Water and Ice.—To represent water, use a sheet of clear glass, and build up underneath it a bottom of sand, or gravel, or weeds, as may be necessary. Ice is easily counterfeited by coating a sheet of glass or wood with paraffin, which is quite white, and sufficiently transparent to give the proper effect. Icicles are manufactured by Demuth Brothers, 89 Walker Street, New York, especially for taxidermists, at very moderate prices, and are infinitely better than anything the taxidermist can produce. They are fastened to the sides of snow-covered rocks, or wherever they belong, by setting them at the base in stiff papier-maché with sinew glue.
Snow is made by flowing plaster Paris over the surface to be covered, and dressing its surface at once; and then, before it becomes quite hard, sprinkling its surface with painter's frosting, which is exceedingly thin flakes of clear glass, and must be ground up in a mortar to get it fine enough to use. If ground too finely, it becomes a dull white powder, like marble dust, and is useless. In order to give a glistening appearance to the surface the particles must be large enough to reflect light. Mica is of no use for this purpose. In making the snow that covers the ground underneath the group of musk ox in the National Museum, Mr. Joseph Palmer invented a compound composed of the pulp of white blotting-paper, starch, and plaster Paris, which made a white, fluffy-looking mass that could be sprinkled over the ground by hand, and closely resembles a light fall of snow.
For the preparation of boughs of evergreens for use in groups, so that the needles will not fall off the twigs, Mr. Jenness Richardson, taxidermist to the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, has, by long and patient experimenting, evolved a solution in which he actually effects the complete preservation of coniferous foliage. When the branches to be used have been put through this liquid and dried, they are afterward painted, and are really as perfect as when living on the parent stem. Mr. Richardson has kindly put me in possession of the knowledge of his entire process, but I am not at liberty to publish it at present.
Painted Backgrounds.—The beauty of a wall-case, or indeed of any group in a flat case, is greatly enhanced by the addition of a painted background of the proper character to represent the home surroundings of the living creatures in front of it. Of course the back must seem to be a harmonious continuation of the bottom, where the real objects are. The tints of the picture should be very quiet, and by no means gaudy or striking, and should not attract attention away from the zoological specimens. The objects to be gained in a painted background are distance, airiness, and, above all, a knowledge of the country inhabited by the bird or mammal. As an example of the value of a painted background in the production of a pleasing effect, the reader is respectfully referred to a group the writer produced nine years ago, entitled "Coming to the Point," and now in the National Museum (see Fig. 1, Plate XVI.). It is not boasting to say that that simple group, composed of a white setter dog, six partridges, a bush full of autumn-tinted leaves, and a really handsome painted background (by Mary E.W. Jeffrey) has given more pleasure than anything else the writer ever produced. The case is only ten inches deep, but the apparent distance is about a mile, and the autumn scene is very acceptable to the public, sportsmen especially.
As yet the museums will have no painted backgrounds. Ten years ago they would have no groups, and no birds with painted legs and beaks. They have all come to the two latter, and they will all come to painted backgrounds also, in due time, and it will be a good thing for them when they do. If I am ever at the head of a museum, it shall have groups with painted backgrounds galore, and there will be imitators thereof in plenty. There is in this direction a vast field which has hardly been touched, and when it is once developed the world will be the gainer. Museum managers the world over are too conservative by half. Some of them will get out of the ruts they are in by following others; some will not get out until they are dragged out, and a few others will never get out at all.
Twenty-five years hence the zoological museums of this country will be as attractive and pleasing as the picture galleries, and they will teach ten times as many object-lessons as they do now. To-day the average museum is as lifeless as a dictionary; but the museum of the future will be life itself.
In Plate XVI. are shown three other examples of wall-cases, of different kinds. Fig. 10 is a group of humming-birds, with choice accessories, under a hemispherical glass shade, surrounded by a black velvet mat, and set in a rich gold frame. This exceedingly artistic arrangement is designed either to stand on an easel or hang on the wall, and is the work of Mr. and Mrs. George H. Hedley. No. 11 represents a group of gray squirrels in a rustic case made of papier-maché, with glass front, top, and sides, and natural accessories, the work of Mr. Joseph Palmer, of the National Museum. No. 12 represents a group of south southerly ducks at the edge of a marsh, in a square case with closed back, and painted background. This was prepared by Mr. William Palmer. In Fig. 57 appears a representation of a very pretty wall-case, by Mr. F.A. Lucas. This was one of a series of four companion cases representing the four seasons, and it is only the very unscientific who need to be informed that the blue-birds building their nest are meant to represent "Spring."
EXPLANATION OF PLATE XVI.
Contributions of Ornamental Taxidermy from the New York Exhibition of the Society of American Taxidermists to the U.S. National Museum.
| Fig. | ||
| 1. | "Coming to the Point" | By W.T. Hornaday. |
| Special Medal at Third Exhibition of S.A. | ||
| T.; also medal at Cincinnati Exposition, | ||
| 1884. | ||
| 2. | "An Interrupted Dinner" | By Frederic A. Lucas. |
| Diploma of Honor at First Exhibition. | ||
| 3. | Head of Caribou | By W.J. Critchley. |
| (Presented by Professor Henry A. Ward.) | ||
| 4. | Peacock Screen | By Thos. W. Fraine. |
| 5. | "Wounded Heron" | By F.S. Webster. |
| Second Specialty Medal, Third Exhibition, | ||
| S.A.T. | ||
| 6. | Dead Gull | By Edwin A. Capen. |
| 7. | Frightened Owl | By John Wallace. |
| Special Medal, Third Exhibition. | ||
| 8. | Bald Eagle | By John Wallace. |
| 9. | Fox Squirrel | By P.W. Aldrich. |
| 10. | Humming-Bird Group | By Mr. and Mrs. |
| Geo. H. Hedley. | ||
| 11. | Group of Gray Squirrels | By Joseph Palmer. |
| 12. | Group of Ducks | By William Palmer. |
| 13. | Grotesque Group of Frogs | By J.F.D. Bailly. |
| 14. | Frogs Skating | By J.F.D. Bailly. |
| 15. | Snowy Heron | By Thomas Rowland. |
| 16. | Portrait of Jules Verreaux | By J.F.D. Bailly. |
PLATE XVI.
[a]Ornamental]
[a]TAXIDERMY.]
Table Groups.—Very fine specimens are often furnished with cases having glass on all sides, including the top, permitting inspection from all points. Of course every group of this kind requires a small table for its base. The most striking table group I have ever seen is one that was prepared by Mr. F.A. Lucas, entitled "An Interrupted Dinner," and represented by Fig. 2, Plate XVI. A red-tailed hawk has just killed a ruffed grouse, and has scarcely begun his meal when a goshawk swoops down upon him with outstretched talons to seize the quarry. The hawk has turned upon his back, shielding his prey with one wing, and with beak and talons "at full cock" is ready to receive his assailant, who hovers in mid-air immediately above him. The goshawk is supported on an invisible brass standard, which enters his body by way of the tail, and the illusion is perfect.
[a]Fig. 57.]—Wall-case of Birds, by Frederic A. Lucas.
Mr. Frederic S. Webster has in his Washington studio a table-case single specimen which is in every sense a masterpiece. It is very nearly a replica, but with a heron of a larger species, of his prize piece, "The Wounded Heron," represented in Plate XVI., Fig. 5. A snowy heron lies on its back (on a black velvet panel), its breast pierced by a gilt arrow, which the wounded bird has seized with its right foot, and is endeavoring to withdraw. The subject is a difficult one, and its treatment in every detail is masterly.
Dead-Game Panels.—Game birds of all kinds—particularly the handsomest ducks, geese, grouse, woodcock, and snipe—made to represent bunches of dead game, are very popular as dining-room ornaments, and during the last ten years the taxidermists of this country have produced thousands of them, many of great beauty. In regard to their proper make-up I will offer a few suggestions.
While the bird is yet warm, or at least relaxed, hang it up by one leg, pose it carefully, and mark out its outline on paper. See that the bird hangs like a dead bird, and not like a stuffed bird. In mounting the skin, make the body flat rather than round, and have the eyes three-quarters closed. The majority of "dead-game" birds are mounted with their eyes wide open. Birds close their eyes when dying.
The "Dead Gull," shown in Plate XVI., Fig. 5, which is the work of Mr. E.A. Capen, of Boston, author of "Oology of New England," may be taken as a perfect model of its kind. In every line it is a dead bird, one that has been killed with small shot in a sportsman-like manner, and has fallen dead without a feather awry.
Fire-Screens.—Probably no handsomer fire-screens were ever produced by a taxidermist than those of Mr. Thomas W. Fraine. The specimen presented by him to the National Museum is represented in Plate XVI., Fig. 4. It is made of the mounted head and neck of a peacock, set against a background of the ocellated tail feathers, of which the magnificent metallic feather shield from the bird's back forms the centre. The framework is a very thin board of tough but light wood, the back of which is covered with satin or raw silk, and the whole is supported on an elegant gilt tripod standard. The effect of this arrangement as a whole is truly superb, and it is no wonder that Mr. Fraine's peacock screens have been very popular.
The wings of the roseate spoonbill, the scarlet ibis, pelican, egret, great blue heron, and many other birds, are often made into fire-screens, either with or without the mounted head and neck. Of these the two first mentioned are the most beautiful, especially the roseate spoonbill.
There is one form of screen produced in the west against which I protest. An entire bird is mounted standing on a perch-standard, its wings are spread full stretch, and drawn upward, regardless of the laws of anatomy, until the front edges meet and touch on a perpendicular line above the bird's back. Such an arrangement of wings for a bird that is otherwise naturally mounted is painful to look upon, to say the least. The bird seems to be undergoing torture, and the general effect is not pretty.
Bird Medallions.—In 1880 Mr. F.S. Webster's genius evolved one of the most beautiful designs in ornamental taxidermy ever produced, viz., the bird medallion. The idea of mounting one-half of a bird was not of itself a new one, but Mr. Webster's development of that suggestion was entirely new and novel. Instead of mounting one side of a bird with the rotundity that an actual half of a fully mounted bird should possess, he studiously flattened the subject, carefully preserving all the while a perfect uniformity in proportions, and in each case produced the proportions of an ordinary medallion. Of course both legs appeared on the specimen, and every specimen so mounted was the finest of its kind, and faultless in form and finish. The first specimen of this sort may be described as a type of all the rest.
The subject chosen was a snowy heron (Ardea caudidissima) of extra fine quality. In the centre of a massive and very deep gold and velvet frame, with a glass across its top, against a background of black velvet of the heaviest and finest quality stood the snow-white bird, in relief,—a genuine medallion. The exquisite plumes of the head, breast, and back lay against the rich black cloth like threads of spun glass. The head was raised, and the beak slightly elevated in a very life-like attitude; the body rested on one leg, which stood on a little gilt log, modeled in papier-maché, and the other foot was held up near the breast in an attitude characteristic of the herons. The effect as a whole was charming. There was nothing gaudy, nor cheap, nor hard in the arrangement, and the idea was a great success. The receiving-frame used by Mr. Webster was also his own design, called forth by the necessity of fully protecting the work.
Other birds that became popular subjects for treatment in this way were the wood duck, scarlet ibis, white ibis, roseate spoonbill, English pheasant, and resplendent trogon. Of course the color and quality of the material used as a background was varied to suit the colors of each subject, but of all the materials tried, plush proved to be most acceptable.
Heads.—This subject has been fully discussed in another chapter. An additional example, showing a particularly fine head of a barren ground caribou, on a shield of a very artistic pattern, is to be seen in Plate XVI., Fig. 3, the original of which was mounted by Mr. William J. Critchley, and presented to the Society, for its exhibit in the National Museum, by Professor Henry A. Ward.
Single Specimens.—Eagles, owls, hawks, ravens, crows, herons, ducks, grouse, and other game birds in general, mounted singly, on either plain or fancy pedestals, make very interesting and proper ornaments for the tops of book-cases, wall-brackets, easels, and the like. Good examples of objects of this class are represented in Plate XVI. as follows: Fig. 8, Bald Eagle; Fig. 7, "Frightened Owl," by Mr. John Wallace, of New York City; Fig. 15, Snowy Egret, by Mr. Thomas Rowland; and No. 9, Gray Squirrel, by Mr. P.W. Aldrich, of Boston.
Grotesque Groups.—No one who has ever visited one of the exhibitions of the S.A.T. is likely to forget the exceedingly droll and mirth-provoking groups of stuffed frogs, caricaturing poor humanity, produced by Mr. J.F.D. Bailly, now of Montreal, Canada. As a humorist and satirist our old friend Bailly has few equals, and, in conjunction with his fine mechanical skill, his love of the ridiculous took permanent form in groups of frogs. The frog seems to have been created for the especial purpose of enabling Monsieur Bailly to caricature mankind. The results must be seen to be appreciated. We have had groups of frogs duelling, playing billiards, making love, getting drunk, smoking, dancing, fishing, gaming, electioneering, and what not. For frogs, however, there is only one taxidermist, for I have never seen anyone else, either French or American, who could even rival our old friend. He skinned every frog through its mouth, without breaking the skin, turned it wrong side out, wired it, made its legs of cotton, turned it back, filled its body with cotton, set it up in position, varnished it all over, and fitted it out with miniature furniture to suit the subject.
Mr. Bailly used to cut similar taxidermic capers with squirrels, and Messrs. Critchley, Lucas, and others have produced some very amusing grotesque pieces with cats and kittens. In Plate XVI., Fig. 15, is shown (indistinctly) one of Mr. Bailly's frog groups, entitled "Sold Again." A fisherman is in the act of pulling out a big fish, which the attending small boy reaches out to take in with a dip-net, when the fish turns out to be only an old shoe.
Fur Rugs with Mounted Heads.—Before a raw pelt or skin can be made up as a rug, it must be sent to a first-class tanner, and thoroughly tanned and dressed. This process should make the skin clean, soft, and pliable. If the head is to be mounted, that part should not be tanned, nor put through any process. After the skin has been properly tanned, relax the head, and mount it in such a manner that the head will lie as flat as possible upon the floor. When the skull is present, it is customary to mount tiger, leopard, and bear rugs with the mouth open, snarling. Some prefer to have a head mounted with the lower jaw entirely off, and only the upper half of the head filled out. This makes of the head what is known as a "mask." Every rug requires to have an inner lining of buckram to give it body and stiffness sufficient to keep it spread out flat. Underneath that must come the lining proper, of quilted felt of suitable color, which is generally left projecting an inch or two beyond the skin all around. This projecting edge is pinked with a pinking iron, to make it more ornamental.
The finest work on rugs, particularly the finer kinds, such as lion, tiger, leopard, and bear, is done by Mr. F.S. Webster, of Washington, who has developed this line of work most handsomely and systematically, and who does an immense amount of it. Elsewhere in this book appears full directions for the preservation of skins for sale as pelts for furriers' use.
How to Make Imitation Rocks.—In making a rockwork pedestal, the first thing is to build your foundation, of wood if it be very large, of wood covered with very stiff and strong paper, if it be small. In the latter case there must be a wooden skeleton to which the paper may be tacked. Having tacked the paper on in large sheets, and duly crumpled it to get the proper form of the rocky mass, give the paper a coat of thick glue. When dry it will be quite stiff and strong. Now apply papier-maché of a coarse quality, and model its surface to show the proper angles or lines of stratification. Procure some granite or sandstone, or whatever rock you choose to imitate, pound it up as finely as necessary, and after giving the surface of the papier-maché a coat of thick glue, apply your rock material by throwing it against the surface to be covered, so that the particles indent the surface and stick fast. In this way the whole surface can be completely covered, and when it is done with the actual material, no painting is necessary. The possibilities and variations in this line are infinite, and so much depends upon circumstances it is unprofitable to go further into details.
Very pretty single pieces, or small masses of rock, may be made by using peat, or coke, or cork, either in large pieces or smaller pieces glued together, and covering the surface with fine sand mixed with various dry colors, and adding colored lichens in spots here and there.
Cloth is poor stuff to use in making rockwork. It draws in straight lines, and in smooth, plain surfaces. It generally shows up the wooden framework to perfection. Use manila paper instead, by all means, and take great pains in shaping your wooden foundation. Always avoid straight lines and plain surfaces.
[CHAPTER XXIX.]
GROUPS AND GROUPING.
The rapidity with which the art of taxidermy has won its way to public favor in the United States during the last two decades is certainly very gratifying. Less than twenty years ago a great naturalist declared that a skin stuffed is a skin spoiled. Even ten years ago the only specimens permitted in museums were those that were mounted singly, in stereotyped attitudes, on polished pedestals of hard wood.
Between the years 1860 and 1876 a few of the more ambitious taxidermists of Europe produced various groups of mammals, large and small. Of these, one of the most noteworthy was the "Lion and Tiger Struggle," by Edwin Ward, of London, and another was Jules Verreaux's "Arab Courier attacked by Lions." The most of these groups represented animals in theatrical attitudes, usually fighting. While they were of much interest for certain purposes, they were of but little value to persons desiring to study typical forms of the species which were represented. It would have been quite as appropriate to place the "Dying Gladiator" or "The Laocoon" in an ethnological museum, as it would have been to place such groups as the "Lion and Tiger Struggle" of Edwin Ward, or Rowland Ward's "Combat of Red Deer," in a collection of mounted mammals in a scientific museum. Up to the year 1879 no large groups of mammals had been prepared in this country which were considered appropriate for scientific display collections. Furthermore, the production of groups of mammals or birds suitable for scientific museums was generally considered an impossibility.
In 1879 the writer returned from a collecting trip to the East Indies, having in mind numerous designs for groups of mammals, both large and small. It was believed then that many of these would not only be suitable for scientific museums, but would also be far more attractive and instructive than ordinary specimens. A design for a group of orang utans was prepared and submitted to Professor Henry A. Ward, with whom the writer was then associated, at his Natural History Establishment, with a proposition to prepare such a group as was there represented. After considerable hesitation Professor Ward finally decided to let the experiment be tried, and the group was prepared according to the design.
I do not deny the soft impeachment that in one respect this design was highly suggestive of the methods adopted by my European rivals to secure attention to their work, or, in other words, it was a trifle sensational. The group in question represented a pair of immense and hideously ugly male orang utans fighting furiously while they hung suspended in the tree-tops. The father of an interesting family was evidently being assailed by a rival for the affection of the female orang utan, who, with a small infant clinging to her breast, had hastily quitted her nest of green branches, and was seeking taller timber. The nest which she had just quitted was an accurate representation of the nest constructed by this great ape.
In the middle of the group, and at the highest point, was another nest in the top of a sapling, on the edge of which another interesting young orang utan—a production evidently of the previous year, was gazing down with wide-eyed wonder at the fracas going on below. The accessories to this were so designed and arranged as to represent an actual section of the top of a Bornean forest, at a height of about thirty feet from the ground, representing the natural trees, with leaves, orchids, pepper-vines, moss, and vegetation galore. For such a subject an unusual amount of care was bestowed on the accessories. Although the design of this group included the theatrical feature of a combat between animals, there was method in this madness. This feature was introduced for the specific purpose of attracting attention to the group and inviting discussion.
PLATE XVII.
Reproduced from "Two Years in the Jungle."
[a]A Fight in the Tree-tops.]
[a](Part of the Group in the National Museum, Mounted by the Author.)]
The remainder of the group was of such a character that it seemed no scientific observer could find fault with its naturalness. All the various members of the group were represented in natural attitudes (the result of elaborate life-studies in the Bornean jungles), and each one told its own story of the orang utan's life and habits (Plate XVII.)
It is not too much to say that the group caught the popular fancy. It was completed in September, 1879, just in time to be sent to Saratoga, for exhibition before the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, ostensibly for the purpose of illustrating a paper by the author on "The Species of Bornean Orangs." Naturally it attracted considerable attention, and it seemed to meet the approval of the members of the Association, particularly the museum directors and superintendents, who were especially interested in such work.
Although it may be the reverse of modest in me to say so, I cannot help believing that the production of that group marked the beginning of an era in the progress of museum taxidermy in the United States. The price placed upon this group ($2,000) prevented its immediate sale; but in a short time another group of orang utans, similar in composition but of a very different design, was ordered by Mr. Robert Colgate, of New York, for the American Museum of Natural History, and prepared by the writer at Professor Ward's establishment. This group represented the orang at home—a perfectly peaceful scene in the top of a Bornean forest. It included five orang utans, of various sizes and ages, feeding on durions, sleeping in a nest, climbing, sitting, and swinging. This group was also very well received by the public. As in the case of the first production, the accessories were all carefully worked out. The price paid for this group was $1,500.
In the year 1880, when the Society of American Taxidermists was organized in Rochester, N.Y., for the development of the art of taxidermy, the museum-group idea was much discussed by its founders at Ward's Natural Science Establishment. Mr. Frederic S. Webster determined to make a further test of public sentiment by the production of a large group of birds, designed especially for a place in some scientific museum. With most praiseworthy enterprise he accordingly prepared, at his own expense, and with great care and skill, a group of three flamingoes of the largest size. Two of the birds were represented as standing at the edge of a shallow lagoon, and the third was sitting on its nest of mud. The water of the lagoon was successfully represented, as also were certain aquatic plants by artificial productions of the finest kinds. At the first exhibition of the Society, which was held in Rochester, in 1880, this group, and also the first group of orang utans, "A Battle in the Tree-tops," was exhibited. To the group of orang utans was awarded the specialty medal, offered "for the best piece in the entire exhibition;" but to the surprise of everyone, save the judges themselves, and to the consternation and chagrin of the founders of the Society, the group of flamingoes was entirely ignored, and the medal offered for the second best piece in the entire exhibition was awarded to a solitary wood-duck, mounted by Mr. Webster, and figured herewith (Fig. 58).
[a]Fig. 58.]—Mr. Webster's Prize Wood-Duck.
The failure of the flamingo group to receive any recognition caused deep disappointment to all those who had watched its production with so much interest and hopeful anticipation. It had been fondly hoped that it might prove to be the predecessor of a long series of bird groups of the most varied and interesting character.
The judges of this exhibition were men of high scientific attainments, and their honesty of purpose in making their awards could not be questioned for a moment. On being mildly taken to task for their failure to appreciate the group of flamingoes, the judges maintained that such groups were not suitable for scientific museums, as was the evident intention in its preparation. Arguments to the contrary were of no avail, and the believers in such groups were obliged for the time being to hang their harps on the willows. It is a pleasure to record the fact that, although the time had not then arrived, subsequent events have proved that the idea of the group-makers was a good one; and, although the production of groups did not come to pass precisely as was then anticipated, time has wrought its perfect work, and groups are now the order of the day.
In 1882 the writer was appointed chief taxidermist of the National Museum. In the year following, the first group of orang utans, "The Fight in the Tree-tops," was purchased of Professor Ward by that institution, and after being partly reconstructed was placed on exhibition in the Hall of Mammals, where it now is. Since it left his establishment, Professor Ward has been pleased to call it "the king of groups."
The group idea was frequently advanced by the writer to the directors of the National Museum, but the time for its practical adoption on a liberal scale did not arrive until 1886. It is true that in 1884 Professor Goode had six groups of ducks prepared by Mr. Webster, and six bird groups of the same size prepared by Mr. Marshall at the Museum; but with the completion of these the mounting of bird groups there came to an end. The condition of the regular exhibition series of mounted mammals demanded several years' uninterrupted work before any attention could be devoted to such exceptional work as the preparation of groups either large or small. Finally, in the year 1886, the auspicious moment arrived. The collecting by the writer of a very large series of specimens of the American bison resulted in his receiving permission to prepare a large mounted group after his own design. To his intense gratification he was given carte blanche as to time and expense, and no limit was placed on the size of the group, the character or extent of the accessories, or the cost of the case to contain all. The experiment was to be regarded as a crucial test of the group idea as adapted to the purposes of scientific museums.
While the group of buffaloes was still in course of preparation, the writer prepared, as a "feeler," a very simple group, consisting of three coyotes, a large male and female and one young specimen. The attitudes and grouping was simplicity itself, and the ground was nothing but gravelly sod, bearing a few stunted bunches of bad-lands grass. In order that familiarity might not breed contempt, this group was kept carefully secluded from the observation of the Assistant Director until it was finished and in its case in the mammal hall of the museum. Its character was about as follows: A young specimen—a puppy about four weeks old—was playfully endeavoring to pull the jawbone of an antelope out of its mother's mouth. Standing a trifle behind these two stood the father of the family, a really noble specimen of the species, if by any stretch of the imagination a coyote—the king of sneaks—can be considered noble. His head was held high in the air, and he was undoubtedly looking afar off, as if watching for the coming of the man with a gun. (See Plate XVIII.)
This little group was heartily approved, and the question of groups in the National Museum was settled forever before the production of the buffalo group was fully accomplished. The idea as a whole was pronounced not only satisfactory, but exceedingly desirable, and orders were given that groups of all the more important American mammals should be designed and produced as rapidly as practicable. Work was immediately commenced on several other groups, and by the time the group of buffaloes was completed and ready for exhibition, which occurred in March, 1888, three other groups were ready to be displayed at the same time, viz., of antelopes, prairie-dogs, and opossums.
The reception accorded the group of buffaloes settled all doubt that might have previously existed regarding the estimation in which such productions would be held by the public. At present the only trouble which the taxidermic department of the National Museum labors under is that it is unable to produce groups of mammals half fast enough. In March, 1890, a large group of moose, of the same dimensions as the group of buffaloes, was completed, and a group of musk oxen was completed a month later. Many other groups are in course of preparation.
PLATE XVIII.
[a]Group of Coyotes. Mounted by the Author.]
By a curious coincidence, within three years from the time the Society of American Taxidermists found its first group of birds so frowned upon by museum officers, the British Museum undertook the preparation of a large series of mounted groups of birds, with accessories both natural and manufactured. Precisely in line with our idea, these groups were intended to show the birds in their haunts, and, as far as possible, to show their nesting habits. Naturally enough they were produced with the care which such subjects merit, and the results are truly admirable. When some of these groups were seen by the enterprising and far-sighted President of the Board of Trustees of the American Museum of Natural History, Mr. Morris K. Jesup, he immediately determined to have a series of bird groups prepared for the great institution he has for many years so ably directed. He engaged Mr. Jenness Richardson, then in the taxidermic department of the National Museum, and the work was begun in 1886. Mr. Richardson never saw any of the bird groups of the British Museum, and the work he has produced is as much his own as though the British Museum collection had never existed. Going as he did from the National Museum, the group idea was by no means new to him, and the seventy beautiful groups he has since produced stand as a lasting monument to his skill as a taxidermist, his artistic conception in designing, and his energy as a collector. No other feature in the entire Museum of Natural History at New York is so attractive and pleasing to the general public as are the groups of mounted birds.
[CHAPTER XXX.]
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF GROUP-MAKING.
There are several vital principles which apply to all kinds of groups, both large and small, and we must consider these before proceeding to discuss the different kinds of groups.
Specimens.—The specimens selected to compose a group should by all means be the finest procurable. It is a mistake to go to the trouble and expense of mounting a number of specimens in a group unless each object is entirely satisfactory in quality. If the group is to represent a family, let the old male and female specimens be of the largest size, and with the finest possible pelage or plumage, as the case may be. Do not begin the mounting of a group until you have in hand a series of specimens that is entirely satisfactory. Let them be so fine that their quality will be remarked by all observers. It will then be a pleasure to lavish work upon them. Even if you should mount a specimen and afterward discover that it is inferior, discard it by all means in favor of a better one. A large group of either mammals or birds represents a very considerable outlay in money and time, and unless the quality of the specimens is above criticism, the group is by no means a success. I have found that it is a work of from one to two years' time to procure the specimens necessary for a complete group of large mammals of any kind.
The best of all ways to procure specimens for groups is to go into the field, find them in their haunts, study them alive, study their habitat and their habits; shoot, measure, and preserve them with your own hands. If you are unable to do this yourself, then it must be done for you by some competent person, under your direction. In procuring young animals, which are very necessary in nearly all groups for scientific purposes, the greatest vigilance is required to enable the collector to secure the specimens just when they reach the right age and size.
Design.—When you have determined to prepare a group of a certain species, study the character and size of the subjects to compose it, and then begin by sketching, to the best of your ability, a design in which each specimen shall have its place and attitude. In the preparation of large groups, I have always found the satisfactory arrangement of the specimens the most puzzling and perplexing feature of the work. But however difficult it may be to satisfy myself with a design, I never proceed with a group until the composition of my sketch group is satisfactory. The two largest and finest specimens in a group should constitute its central and commanding figures. Put as little life as possible in the corners of a group, and by all means make the specimens show an interest in, and a relation to, each other. The design must be dominated by one central idea or purpose, which should never be lost sight of in the arrangement of the group. It is unnecessary to say that each group should form a perfect picture, compact, well rounded, and the relationship of the different specimens to each other should be so clearly defined as to leave no room for the suggestion that the specimens have been mounted independently, and simply placed together.
Space.—No matter how small or large a group may be, to be perfect in effect it must have abundant case-room. Let there be some room to spare in the corners and above the group. The top of the case should by all means be of glass. An airy, light, out-door effect can not be secured in a small, cramped cage, in which the specimens appear like caged circus animals. If you wish to have your specimens look alive, and as if they are really on their native heath, they must not be "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd."
Accessories.—Although poor accessories are better than none, you will, of course, have them all as nearly perfect as possible. Spare neither time, trouble, nor expense in procuring the finest collection of accessories that you can possibly gather. Do not think you must be satisfied with the first that comes to hand, but search far and wide until you have obtained precisely what you want. Do not be too lavish in the use of accessory material. Remember that enough is as good as a feast, and too much is good for nothing. There are two principles, either one of which can govern you in your selection of accessory material. One is to select a given spot of ground of precisely the same area as the section you propose to use as the groundwork of your group, and reproduce only such materials as are found on that particular square of mother earth. This is the idea which has been strictly followed in the preparation of the groups of birds in the American Museum of Natural History by Mr. Richardson. I hold to a different principle. I believe that it is best to select from a given locality such material as will best represent an ideal section of the country to be represented as the habitat of the group. Of course, it is necessary to exercise care not to bring together too great an assortment of materials. By acting on this principle we secure a limited selection of the most common and familiar species of plants in a given locality, and at the same time have the advantage of arranging them for the best artistic effect on the ground which has been prepared to accommodate the group according to the design. With small groups, in which a nest or burrow is to be represented, it is an easy and simple matter to reproduce the exact situation in which the home of the animal was situated. In the preparation of large groups this is a practicable impossibility.
Special Exhibition Groups.—To this class properly belongs such subjects as Verreaux's "Arab Courier attacked by Lions;" Edwin Ward's "Lion and Tiger Struggle;" and the two groups, "Lions Fighting" and "Horseman attacked by Tigers," prepared by John Wallace, of New York. Such groups are bold in design, theatrical in effect, and each one is supposed to represent a tour de force on the part of the originator. They are valuable for great expositions, for show-windows, fairs, crystal palaces, and the like. For such purposes the more startling they are, the better. Animals are usually chosen which will admit of a representation of vigorous action. The most favorite theme is large animals in combat. He who has the boldness to introduce the human form divine in such a composition will oftener than otherwise have occasion to wish he hadn't. The human figure is, at best, a difficult subject to handle, and in its introduction with mounted quadrupeds the designer often finds, to his sorrow, how very short is the step from the sublime to the ridiculous. In general I should say that the human figure is an excellent thing to leave out of a group of mounted quadrupeds, unless it happens to be an Esquimau completely enveloped in thick furs. In the preparation of groups of this class, the ambitious taxidermist has before him almost as great a variety of subjects as has the sculptor, since his work is subject to precisely the same general rules.
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
GROUPS OF MAMMALS.
Grouping Small Mammals.—Since our small mammals can not migrate south in winter, as do the birds, each species must provide itself with a winter home, or perish. The nesting and burrowing habits of these builders of "homes without hands" afford a most interesting field for investigation and study, and one which is of great interest to everyone. Almost without exception, every mammalian species found in the United States below the size of the coyote, establishes for itself during a part, if not the whole, of the year, a fixed habitation. Some of the more enterprising species, notably the squirrels and rabbits, enjoy the luxury of a summer residence as well as a winter home. The groups of small mammals which the National Museum is now producing and placing upon exhibition have for one of their principal features the illustration of the homemaking habits of the species represented. A mention of one or two examples will serve to convey an idea of the type of each class.
A group of American opossums may be taken as a good example. The case which encloses the entire group is 4 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet high. The frame of the case is as light as possible, and all four sides and the top are of glass. On the side of a sloping bank stands the base of a small gum-tree, with the roots on the lower side exposed by the crumbling away of the bank. Of course the trunk rises to the top of the case, where it is cut squarely off. At the bottom of the sloping bank, between two of the roots, is an opening, which is recognized at once as the doorway to the opossum's home. The burrow winds upward between the roots of the tree, and finally turns off to the left into the bank, where, after running through a passage-way of two or three feet in length, the nest itself is found. It is in a pocket-like excavation, and a circular section is cut out of the front of the bank so as to make an opening through which the nest can be seen. The nest is lined with dead leaves, in which lies an opossum curled up and sound asleep. At the back of the case a sectional view of the bank is represented, and by means of an opening cut here and there, the course of the burrow is plainly seen. In the foreground is an old mother opossum with several young ones riding on her back, clinging to her gray coat, while the head of another protrudes from her pouch. This represents the manner in which the opossum carries her young after they have reached a certain age. From a small branch hangs another opossum, suspended by its prehensile tail, sprawling in mid-air. This specimen is a female, and shows the size and location of the wonderful marsupial pouch. Another individual is climbing up the trunk of the tree. A fourth specimen, which has been disturbed by another, is pausing to protest with widely opened mouth, while in the act of creeping into the mouth of the burrow.
Please notice the number of facts that are taught by this simple little group. It shows that the opossum is a marsupial, and the female carries her young in a pouch in her own body; that when the young reach a certain age, they ride upon the mother's back, clinging to her fur; that the animal is arboreal in habit, and has a prehensile tail, by which it is capable of suspending itself; that it burrows in banks in dry situations, and sleeps curled up like a ball in a bed of dry leaves. It also shows the full size of the adult, the young of the previous year, and the recent brood. But for an unfortunate accident, which has yet to be repaired, it would also show the number born at one birth. Of course in this group the grass and moss is properly represented, and there are artificial leaves on the tree branches which enter the group.
Groups of this class can easily be made to show the ordinary nesting and breeding habits of the animals represented. Now it happens that animals of some species make a variety of nests, according to circumstances or caprice. In 1889 we prepared a group in three sections, each of which shows one of the habits of the gray squirrel in nesting. Each is composed of an actual nest, and in the identical tree in which it was built by Bunny himself. One represents a nest in a hollow beech tree, in which a pair of gray squirrels bred for years. Another is what might be called a summer nest, made of cedar bark, in the top of a cedar tree. It is a round ball, and in size and shape much resembles a hornet's nest. The third section represents an outside nest of green oak-leaves, placed on a branch of an oak tree. These three groups are exhibited in one case, but while each is separated from the others by a plate of heavy tinted glass, it is made apparent that they all illustrate the habits of the same animal. The specimens composing the three groups were all collected within a radius of ten miles of the city of Washington. Besides teaching what the nesting habits of the gray squirrel are, it also impresses upon the observer the very important fact that the habits of different individuals of a given species are capable of wide variation. They show how dangerous it is for a student or scientific investigator to generalize too freely from one or two facts, and that it is dangerous for anyone to say what an animal will not do!
In beginning the preparation of small mammal groups (for a museum) the following hints may be of service: It is not necessary that a small group should be designed and sketched out in advance. The first step, therefore, is the finding of a typical family of specimens, and a suitable burrow or nest. The character of the creature's home will largely determine the design of your group. By all means endeavor to secure a nest or burrow which can be fitly shown as a typical home of the creature represented.
When the nest of an animal is situated in a tree, it is nearly always possible to cut out a section of the tree, and introduce it bodily into your case, with appropriate leaf settings. When an animal burrows in the ground, as do the fox and the woodchuck, the best that can be done is to dig out the spot carefully, taking measurements and diagrams as you proceed, to show the direction and size of the entrance and the exact shape and size of the nest. You can then manufacture a bank and reproduce a perfect fac-simile. Of course all the nest materials—refuse bones, hair, and feathers—must be taken along bodily, and used in the manufactured nest.
In displaying a portion of a tree-trunk which contains a nest, it has been our custom to saw out a rectangular section at one side of the hollow, and hang the piece on hinges at one side of the opening, like an open door, so that the entire interior and the situation of the nest can be seen. Of course it is in order to place a number of the young specimens in the nest in characteristic attitudes.
When you have collected a number of young specimens, mount them at once while the forms and attitudes are fresh in your mind and the skins are in good condition. If you are lucky enough to get the young alive, you can mount some of the skins while the others serve as living models.
Now comes an important point. It usually happens that at the time when the young are of the best age to display in a group, the fur of the adult specimen is at its poorest. Worse than that, shedding is often in progress. No matter what hypercritics may say, do not hesitate to perpetrate an anachronism by taking adult specimens later in the season, when their fur is at its best. It would be an injustice to the group, to the species, and to yourself, to include adult specimens in their poorest pelage. Along with your groups of young animals, which necessarily represent conditions during spring or summer, do not forget to represent some of your species in their winter homes, with their stores of nuts, acorns, etc., for winter use.
The field open to the conscientious and really artistic taxidermist in the preparation of groups is a wide and deeply interesting one. I know of no branch of taxidermy which ought to be more interesting than this. Its possibilities are open to all. While it is impossible for everyone to prepare groups of large mammals, in the matter of small groups you can say, "The world's mine oyster."
Groups of Large Mammals.—In creating a high-class group of large mammals, it is, as has been stated before, extremely desirable to prepare the design first, and collect the specimens to suit it. There is no burrow or nest to reproduce, and this course is not only possible, but usually very necessary.
There is one important fact which should never be lost sight of in the preparation of a design for a group of large quadrupeds. If the animals are purely terrestrial, as will be the case in nearly all large groups, the largest and finest adult male and female should each stand on a flat and horizontal surface, in easy and conventional attitudes. This is necessary in order that the form, height, and back outline of each of the typical adult specimens can be studied by the technical zoologist with as much certainty and accuracy as any ordinary case specimen standing on a flat pedestal of hard wood. To illustrate the point: If the huge bull bison in our large group had been put walking up hill, or walking down hill, it would now be practically impossible for anyone wishing to draw a picture of him to accurately determine the precise angle of his hump. Furthermore, his height at the shoulders would be either exaggerated or diminished, almost unavoidably. As it is, he was with deliberate intention mounted on a flat and horizontal surface, as was the cow also, so that even though they are in a group they lose nothing whatever of their value to the technical zoologist, who demands that all specimens shall be mounted on flat surfaces, and in conventional attitudes for the sake of comparison. Having done this much for pure science, we are at liberty to vary the attitudes of the remaining specimens of the group.
In a museum group suppress all tendency to the development of violent action on the part of your specimens. In a well-regulated museum no fighting is allowed. Represent every-day, peaceful, home scenes in the lives of your animals. Seek not to startle and appal the beholder, but rather to interest and instruct him. Surely there are enough quiet and peaceful attitudes to supply all your specimens without exhausting the stock. Let them be feeding, walking, climbing up, lying down, standing on the alert, playing with each other, or sleepily ruminating—in fact, anything but fighting, leaping, and running. If you do not happen to know the habits of the animals which form the subject of your group, and it is impossible for you to learn them by observation, then must you throw aside all reserve, and appeal to some one who has seen and studied them in their haunts.
It is no child's play to prepare a group of large mammals. It invariably costs several hundreds of dollars, perhaps even thousands, and the work is supposed to last a century or longer. Judge, therefore, how important it is that every detail of the work should be absolutely above criticism. If you mount such a group in haste, you are certain to repent at leisure.
Having prepared your design, collected your specimens, and made all your studies for the entire group, the next step, of course, is mounting each individual specimen. It is an excellent plan, and one which we have found particularly satisfactory in grouping ruminants, to prepare all the manikins before putting any skin on permanently. We begin with the most important specimen. By mounting the manikins one by one, and grouping them, we are able to secure the precise artistic effect that was intended in our design. The grouping of the naked manikins from time to time enables you to eliminate errors, and make such changes in the attitudes as the eye may suggest.
A few facts in relation to the work done in setting up the buffalo group will serve as a fair index to work of this kind. Of course it is to be understood that every case is to have a wooden floor, and that one end can be opened bodily. Each of our buffaloes stood on a strong, thick base by itself, a rough pedestal, in fact, of a very substantial character. With pine boards we built a miniature hill, on which stands the spike bull, placed him upon it, and fastened him there permanently. The final work of arrangement was not undertaken until a trial grouping in the case had been satisfactorily made, and the exact position of each specimen definitely settled. A hole was cut in the bottom of the case, to give depth to the pool of water. The bottom of this pool was carefully modeled in papier-maché, and painted. The specimens standing farthest from the end containing the doors were first put in place, and the groundwork built up around them. The face of the cut bank was made by nailing wire cloth to a skeleton framework of boards, and covering this with a coarse sort of papier-maché, made of sawdust, plaster Paris, glue, and hair, and used in large quantities. As fast as a specimen was put in place and fastened, the rough groundwork of boards was covered with the papier-maché composition to make a perfectly smooth foundation to receive the prairie sod. From first to last, between three and four barrels of this coarse papier-maché was used. It was made to set quickly, and the modeling which was done on the surface of the cut bank, and in the bed of the stream, was done as soon as the soft material was put on. The surface of the pool was represented by a sheet of plate glass, a quarter of an inch thick. The entire groundwork of the case was covered with genuine prairie sod, each piece about one inch thick and a foot square, cut on the buffalo range in Montana, and shipped in barrels to Washington.
When this sod became perfectly dry, it lost all color and had the appearance of cured hay. In order to give it the right tone, it was necessary to spray it with a thin mixture of green paint in turpentine, to impart to it a pale green tint. As soon as the papier-maché was dry, the sod was cut neatly, matched carefully, and laid upon it—the joints being skilfully closed. A number of clumps of sage brush and bunches of broom sedge, grubbed up in Montana and carefully dried, were set here and there through the group. A bed of cactus was also introduced in the foreground. The sage brush required no preparation except to pack it carefully, and dry it after it reached Washington, with the branches in position. The leaves were of the right color when dry, and remained attached to the stems. Montana dirt was used in the bottom of the buffalo trail, and on the side of the cut bank. A few buffalo bones were stuck in the side of the bank to represent fossil bones as they are often seen protruding from the faces of cut banks in Montana. While the papier-maché around the edge of the pool was yet soft, tracks were made in it with genuine buffalo hoofs of various sizes, and many more tracks were made in the dust in the bottom of the buffalo trail. Of all the accessories in the buffalo case, everything in sight came from the Montana buffalo range, except the sheet of glass forming the surface of the pool.
PLATE XIX.
Drawn by C.B. Hudson.
[a]Group of American Bison in the National] [a]Museum.]—[a]Collected and Mounted by the Author.]
The last six months of my connection with the National Museum witnessed the completion of the great group of moose, which we began in 1889. In size and general make-up it is a companion piece to the group of buffaloes, and is a memorial worthy of the colossal species it represents. The setting represents a section of the moose woods of Upper Canada, in which the larger animals are browsing on the tender twigs of the white birch. The animals have come together at the edge of a bog, which is growing full of a gigantic species of grayish moss, peculiar to that locality. The time represented is the middle of autumn. The few leaves that remain on the maple saplings have been painted with October's most gorgeous tints of crimson and yellow, mixed with green, and the leaves of the white birch have turned pale yellow. The ground is plentifully strewn with leaves of bright tints, through which the green moss of moist banks shows in patches here and there.
Of the animals, the three largest—and huge beasts they are, truly—are feeding upon the birch twigs. A yearling calf is licking the head of a tiny brown-coated younger brother, while a two-year-old bull is in the act of "riding down" a stout birch sapling in order to get at the branches of its top, which would otherwise be beyond his reach.
Three of these fine specimens were collected by Colonel Cecil Clay, of Washington, and by him presented to the Museum for this group, together with the trees, moss, and other accessories, which he collected with infinite labor and care in the moose woods. He also furnished us with field notes and critical advice throughout, which had much to do in making the group what it is—a monument to Colonel Clay's skill and prowess as a sportsman, and to his deep interest in Alces malchis. It is to be sincerely hoped that other sportsmen will follow the Colonel's admirable example, and aid the museums in which they are most interested to secure some attractive groups.
The moose group was followed immediately by the group of musk-oxen, and there are others of Rocky Mountain goat, mountain sheep, and sea-lions in course of preparation.
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
GROUPS OF BIRDS AND REPTILES.
The principles which underlie the production of successful groups of birds are precisely the same as those which have already been set forth under the head of "Groups of Small Mammals." In addition, however, there is another which should be kept constantly in mind, viz., to guard against the temptation to permit the accessories of a group to completely overshadow, and, I might say, overwhelm, the specimens themselves. Be careful to make the birds conspicuous, and to avoid the appearance of an exhibit of artificial plants and flowers, instead of mounted birds.
Of course each species must be represented by itself in a case which shall contain its nest, displayed in the identical bough, or bunch of grass, or hole in the bank which it occupied when found by the collector. Except when a nest is situated in a bank of earth, the collector should cut a square section out of nature, of the proper dimensions for casing, and convey bodily the nest and its situation to the museum. Occasionally circumstances will prevent this, when it becomes necessary to collect the nest and the material surrounding it, so that with their aid the situation of the nest can be built up in the laboratory.
The finest groups of birds to be found in this country are those in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which are the work of Mr. Jenness Richardson. At present (1891) the series consists of groups composed almost wholly of species found in the State of New York. Each group, except in a few instances, occupies a light, iron-framed case by itself, and stands on an ebonized table-base, raised on legs about eighteen inches from the floor. The framework of the case, and the wood-work of the base is painted black. When the home of a ground-nesting bird is shown, a section has been cut from mother earth, placed on the base as the foundation, and all the perishable plants growing thereon have been carefully reproduced in wax by casting, and put back in place.
Where a nest was situated in a low bush, the bush and its foliage, and the ground beneath have all been included in its transfer. When a nest was placed on the end of a bough, the difficulty has been surmounted very satisfactorily by cutting off as much of the bough as could be put in the case, then reproducing, on the bottom of the case, the ground exactly as it was under the tree, and simply laying carelessly upon it the cut branch containing the nest and the birds. Of course watery situations call for the introduction of the plate-glass imitation.
The feature of these groups that is so pleasing is that each one appears to have been cut out of its place in field or forest, and brought to the museum within an hour. The life-like birds, the earth and water, the natural wood, and the beautiful foliage of spring combine to impart to each group the breezy freshness of the forest, the very soul of Nature all unchanged.
To see these charming productions, fresh from the hand of a true artist-naturalist, and lay aside the spirit of carping criticism which would find fault with even a heavenly harp, is the next thing to finding one's self in the actual haunts of our native birds, with their songs trilling in our ears. Mr. Richardson's groups lack but one thing—the song of the birds. They are so many pretty pages from Nature's choicest book, and actually bring the life of the forest into the otherwise dead and silent museum hall.
The time will yet come when our wealthy lovers of art and animated nature will find places in their houses for such groups as these, and the money to pay for them will be forthcoming. At present they are tired of the old-fashioned glass "shade," covering a stiff and utterly unnatural pyramid of small stuffed birds on an impossible "tree." The old-fashioned wall-case of birds also fails to satisfy the æsthete, for the simple reason that something better is wanted. We are all ready to step up to a higher plane.
Groups of Reptiles.—I know of but one good group of reptiles, and that is a group of turtles which was prepared by Mr. F.A. Lucas, and displayed at the exhibition of the S.A.T., in New York, in 1883, where it received a medal, and afterward was presented by him to the National Museum. This altogether unique and pretty group teaches one very important lesson, viz., that even the most commonplace animals are interesting when they are well mounted, and grouped with a setting which represents their natural haunts. Some of the specimens in this group are represented above water, and some beneath it, while one enterprising individual is caught in the act of diving, with part of his body under water and the other half out. The situation represents the successful accomplishment of a very neat mechanical feat, and is of itself an illustration of the possibilities in such matters.
After the quadrupeds of North America have been gathered and grouped until there remain in that direction no more worlds to conquer, it will be quite in order for our enterprising taxidermists then to proceed to the mounting of groups of reptiles.
There are possibilities with such subjects as the crocodiles, iguanas, lizards of various kinds, serpents, and turtles that few dream of. Already Professor Goode has under consideration the production of a series of reptilian groups for the National Museum, and within a short time the work will be undertaken.
[CHAPTER XXXIII.]
HINTS ON PAINTING MUSEUM SPECIMENS.
In the preparation of museum specimens in general there is, from first to last, a great deal of painting to be done, and a knowledge of how to paint specimens properly is quite as necessary as a knowledge of how to mount them.
Materials Necessary for General Work.
| Brushes for Fine Work. | |||
| Artists' round Sable, | No. 2, | each | 8 cts. |
| "" | " 4, | " | 12 cts. |
| "" | " 6, | " | 15 cts. |
| "" | " 7, | " | 18 cts. |
| "" | " 9, | " | 20 cts. |
| "" | " 11, | " | 27 cts. |
| Brushes for Ordinary Work. | |||
| Flat Fitch (bristles), | No. 1, | each | 7 cts. |
| " " | " 2, | " | 7 cts. |
| " " | " 3, | " | 8 cts. |
| " " | " 4, | " | 10 cts. |
| " " | " 5, | " | 10 cts. |
| " " | " 6, | " | 12 cts. |
| Brushes for Coarse Work. | |||
| Sash tool, | No. 5, | each | 20 cts. |
| " | " 6, | " | 25 cts. |
| Sash tool, No. 7, each | 30 cts. | ||
| " | " 8, | " | 35 cts. |
| Palette | 25 cts. | ||
| Palette knife | 25 cts. | ||
| Palette cups, each | 10 cts. | ||
| Spirits of turpentine, per qt. | 15 cts. | ||
| Boiled linseed oil, per qt. | 20 cts. | ||
| Hard oil finish (white, for varnishing) per pt. | 25 cts. |
Windsor & Newton's Tube Colors, as follows:
Ivory black, 8 cts.;
Vandyke brown, 8 cts.;
Burnt sienna, 8 cts.;
Raw sienna, 8 cts.;
Burnt umber, 8 cts.;
Raw umber, 8 cts.;
Naples yellow, 8 cts.;
Chrome yellow, 8 cts.;
Yellow ochre, 8 cts.;
Indigo, 8 cts.;
Indian red, 8 cts.;
Vermilion, 15 cts.;
Flake white, 8 cts.;
Sugar of lead, 8 cts.
For coarse work, all these colors, except the finer ones, should be bought in one-pound cans, ground in oil. In addition to colors ground in oil, it is extremely desirable to have from one to two pounds of each of the following:
Dry Colors, and Cost per Pound.
Zinc white 10 cts.
Vandyke brown 15 cts.
Chrome yellow 25 cts.
Lamp-black 35 cts.
Plumbago 10 cts.
Raw sienna 15 cts.
Burnt umber 15 cts.
Raw umber 15 cts.
Burnt sienna 15 cts.
To the enterprising taxidermist a few dollars judiciously expended in such materials as the above are bread cast upon the waters, that will be sure to return to him before many days, buttered on both sides.
No matter what it costs, have the right kind of brushes, and a good assortment of coloring materials. Do not try to "get along" with whatever you happen to have, if it happens to be not the right thing. Don't try to paint fish scales with a sash tool, or delicate fin-rays with a fitch. Use for such purposes delicate, little sable pencils (flat), Nos. 1 to 4. Take good care of them after use, wash them out with soap and water, or benzine, and keep them in good working order by keeping them clean and soft. Do not let the colors on your palette get in a nasty mess, fit to turn an artist's stomach inside out, but keep your palette clean and in good order. Take from the tubes only as much color as you are likely to use. Keep the centre of your palette free from masses of color, so that you can have that space for mixing.
Only those who have first been taught the slipshod ways of the slouch, and afterward learned the methods of the artist, can realize the advantages in favor of the latter as revealed in results.
General Principles.—The skins and fleshy parts of all mammals and birds become shrunken, mummified and colorless when dry, and if not covered with hair or feathers require to be painted with the colors which have disappeared. As to what the colors should be, the taxidermist must learn by observation from living specimens, or those freshly killed, or from good colored illustrations.
Surface.—Whatever the subject to be painted, the first care is to see that the surface is properly prepared to receive the color. If it be skin, it must be perfectly clean, and free from dirt, dust, or loose scales. If a skin has any sort of powdery deposit upon it, it must be scraped clean with a knife. Holes and seams must be filled up with papier-maché, long enough in advance that it will have time to dry. Papier-maché which is to be painted should always be given two coats of white shellac, mixed rather thin, before putting on any paint. If this is not done, the maché will absorb two or three coats of paint, like a sponge, and the surface will dry perfectly dead.
Gloss.—The colors on terrestrial mammals and birds (except the mouth parts and noses of the former) are very seldom, if ever, what may be called glossy. The mouth parts of mammals, or at least such as are wet by the animal's saliva, are always glossy, as also are the edges of the eyelids, and the bare end of the nose in ruminants.
To give paint a perpetual gloss, like varnish, use colors ground in oil, and mixed with boiled linseed oil only when applied.
To give paint a faint gloss, use colors ground in oil, and mix with a mixture of boiled linseed oil and turpentine, equal parts.
To have paint dry without gloss, mix with turpentine only when it is applied.
To have paint dry flat and dead, use dry colors, and mix with turpentine.
To make paint dry quickly and be very hard, mix with it a little sugar of lead (ground in oil) fresh from the tube.
To paint the skin of an animal, and yet make it look as if the skin contained the color instead of bearing it upon its surface, use oil colors, mix with boiled linseed oil and turpentine, equal parts, and apply. When the paint is beginning to dry, so that it is sticky, take some dry color of a corresponding tint, dip into it a clean, dry, square-ended bristle brush of good size, and twirl it about until it becomes filled with the dry powder, then, with light and delicate strokes, apply it directly upon the painted surface so that the dry color will fall upon the wet paint like a shower of colored dust. This is to be done with the motion that painters use in "stippling," and may very well be done with a stippling brush, if you have one. Do not get on too much of the dry color, or the effect will be spoiled. Your eye must teach you when to stop. In this process of stippling dry color into wet paint, plaster Paris may very frequently be used to good advantage to deaden gloss, and soften effects. In coloring the hairless portions of the faces, hands, etc., of apes, baboons, and monkeys, and on many other subjects, this process is of very great value.
Blending Colors.—If two colors are laid down, one against the other, each in a solid mass, up to the imaginary line that lies between them, the effect is hard and unpleasing, because unnatural. Nature never joins two contrasting-colors without a blending together and softening of the two tones where they touch each other. If it be red and brown, the red merges a little way into the brown, imperceptibly, perhaps, and the line of demarcation between the two is thus softened, and naturalized, if you please. Therefore, in your painting have no hard lines where your colors meet, but always blend adjoining colors together by passing a small brush over the line where they meet.
Strength of Tones.—The colors that Nature puts on an animal are not hard, crude, and staring, like bright red in the mouth of a mounted quadruped, but they are always in harmony with the other parts of the object. A bird may have yellow legs, but if it does, you may be sure they will not be a bright, glossy, chrome yellow, so gaudy as to instantly catch the eye. The chances are, they will be Naples yellow, with only a tinge of chrome. Learn to soften tints so they will not be staring, gaudy, and offensive to the eye. Examine the tongue of a live tiger or lion, and you will notice its color is a pale pink.
In all painting, study the harmony of colors, the strength of tones, and the blending of tints. Do not get your colors too gaudy, too sharply contrasted, nor laid on roughly; but paint evenly, and keep all your colors in perfect harmony.
Painting the Skin of Thinly Haired Mammals.—It very often happens that the skin of a thin-haired mammal has a decided color of its own, which must be imparted to it by painting. This is particularly the case with our next of kin—the apes and monkeys. The orang utan has a chocolate-colored skin, except the old males, in which it is black; the mona monkey has a bluish skin, and the faces of nearly all primates require painting. To paint a skin through thin hair, use oil colors mixed with turpentine, and made so thin that the mixture runs over the skin as soon as it touches it, like water. By separating the hair, it is often possible to get the paint on the skin without saturating the hair save at its roots; but if the turpentine color does get on the hair it must be sponged off with benzine. Do not mix your colors with oil, or you will get into serious trouble; but the oil in which the tube color has been ground will be just sufficient to give a natural tone to the skin. If the color when put on appears too strong and conspicuous, stipple the surface with a little plaster Paris, to tone it down.
Painting Legs and Beaks of Birds.—Paint the legs and beaks of such birds as require it, with a mixture of boiled linseed oil and turpentine, equal parts of each, and have your paint thin enough on the legs that it will not obscure the scales. On the beak, a thicker coat is necessary, and, in fact, it is nearly always necessary to put on two coats. In coloring the beaks of toucans and hornbills, blend adjoining colors very deeply but evenly, and let there be no hard boundary lines anywhere. A little white wax softened and cut with turpentine and mixed with the paint on a bird's beak gives the color a depth and transparency quite similar to the appearance of the beak of a living bird.
Painting Mounted Fishes.—A fish must be perfectly dry before it is touched with a brush. Time spent in painting a half-dry specimen is so much thrown away. The repairs with papier-maché must be complete and dry, and the specimen perfectly clean. Nearly every fish possesses in its coloring pigment a quality which imparts to it a silvery, metallic lustre; therefore, to secure the finest result attainable in painting a fish, either an actual specimen or a plaster cast, all those that are silvery must first be coated over the entire scaly surface with nickel leaf, laid on sizing, similar to the treatment of gold leaf in gilding.
With dark-colored fishes satisfactory work may be done without the use of nickel leaf, except on the under parts, which are nearly always silvery white. It is absolutely impossible to reproduce the brilliant lustre so characteristic of white scales by the use of white paint alone, or even silver bronze, or silver paint. Without the nickel underneath the paint looks dead and artificial. If you are called upon to make a large collection with as little outlay as possible, it will be sufficient to omit the nickel leaf, for your paint will still faithfully record the colors. But if you wish to have your fish look as brilliantly beautiful as when taken struggling from the water, put on the leaf first, and paint on it, thinly, so that the silver will show through your colors and impart to them the desired lustre. If you paint too thickly, the leaf will be covered up, and its lustre obscured.
Do not attempt to use silver bronze, silver paint, or even silver leaf, for nickel leaf is the only substance which has sufficient lustre and will not oxidize, and turn yellow.
If the whole body of a fish is dark, and without silvery tints, it is, of course, unnecessary to use leaf, for the lustre can be obtained by varnishing over the paint.
In many fishes, such as the scaled carp, for example, Marsching's gold paint or Japanese gold can be used directly on the scales (after the entire fish has had a thin coat of Hendley's enamel varnish), and the silver paint can be used to good effect in edging the scales. On the belly, however, which is silvery white, nickel leaf must be used. The heads of most fishes are so dark as to render the use of leaf unnecessary upon them, and of course it need not be used on the fins.
Painting Plaster Casts of Fishes, Reptiles, Etc.—When a cast is first taken from the mould, it will nearly always be found that its surface is pitted here and there with little round holes caused by air-bubbles. The process of wetting the inside of these holes, and carefully filling each one with mixed plaster Paris is called "pointing up" a cast. After this has been carefully done, and the form and surface of the white cast is perfect, if the cast is thoroughly dry we are ready to begin to paint it, and proceed as described in the preceding section.
In case you find it impossible to use nickel leaf on your fishes, you can do very good work without it, except that the silvery parts will not be really silvery, and the white paint put on will gradually turn yellow with age. After you have given the specimen a good coat of colors (using zinc white for the silvery parts, because it is more permanent than other whites), varnish the specimen all over with a kind of heavy white varnish called Siccatif de Harlem, or, lacking that, enamel varnish. This will dry in about twenty minutes, after which paint the object over again, this time with extreme care in the final touches. In painting fishes and reptiles, there is a vast amount of detail to be wrought out, and constant blending of colors. On many fishes each scale must be marked off and painted separately. In blending the edges of two adjoining colors, it must be done with a clean brush—a small one, of course—with either a quick, nervous motion along the line of contact, or else a steady sweep, according to circumstances. When the brush gets full of paint, wash it out in benzine (not turpentine), because it quickly becomes clean, and dries perfectly in a moment.
The eyes of fishes and reptiles are so peculiar, and vary so exceedingly, that it is a practical impossibility to provide glass eyes that will be exactly right for each species. For fishes, as good a way as any is to let the eye be cast in situ, and when you paint the fish, paint the eye also as it should be, and when dry, varnish it over with a thick coat of soluble glass or enamel varnish.