The eye sockets are to be filled with balls of wet cotton to render the lids and surrounding skin soft. The roots of quills and tufts of large feathers will need loosening as some flesh is necessarily left around them.
The small animal skin may be treated the same way but the most thorough and expeditious method of relaxing skins of both animals and birds (except the smallest of the latter) is to plunge them into water, clear in cool weather, slightly carbolized in warm, until they are pretty well relaxed. Then go after the inner side with scraper until any lumps of fat, muscle and the inner skin are well scratched up. Soak in benzine or gasoline and clean with hot meal, sand, sawdust or plaster as directed for tanning. Remember that bird skins must be handled carefully, so do not be too strenuous in beating and shaking them.
Of course if any skin has been laid away with quantities of fat adhering it will need very gingerly handling to save it, in fact unless very rare such skins are not worth trying to save as they have little durability however treated. The largest polar bear skin I ever saw was ruined by lying "in the grease" too long before dressing. Bird skins preserved with the glycerine carbolic preparation require relaxing the legs and a cleaning and dampening up of the inside of the skins.
Furred skins from the pickle need a good scraping on their inner surface, thorough rinsing in soda solution to neutralize the acid and remove all salt, then the benzine bath and cleaning. Don't forget to rinse salted or pickled skins else beads of moisture will form on the specimen in damp weather and crystals of salt in dry.
Occasionally an extra rare skin will drop to pieces through age or other infirmities when being prepared for mounting. The only hope for it then is to glue and pin it piecemeal on a manikin covered with some preparation which gives it a firm surface. While an expert will achieve fair results in such work the amateur could hardly expect success.
CHAPTER IX.
MOUNTING SMALL AND MEDIUM BIRDS.
A word of advice to the beginner as to the variety of specimen to use in first trials. Don't begin on too small a bird until somewhat adept; unpracticed fingers bungle sadly over tiny feathered bodies. A first subject should be at least as large as a bob white to give room to work, and of some variety in which the feathers are firmly embedded.
Snow birds, cardinals, and some others have very thin delicate skins, the pigeons shed their feathers on little or no provocation. Blackbirds and jays are very good to practice on but the very best would be a coot, sometimes called crow duck or mudhen. It is of fair size, closely covered with feathers which will fall in place readily after skinning and wiring even at the hands of a beginner.