You can do as well.
INSTRUMENTS. Knife. Needle and thread. Saw, fine toothed. Scalpel. Scissors, straight and curved. Shears. Skin scraper, not the toothed-edge. Tweezers.
One can get along with simply a jack-knife, pair of shears, and needle and thread; but to do first-class work easily, good tools are required.
MATERIALS. Alcohol. Aluminum leaf. Arsenic, powdered. Clay, potters' or modelling. Eyes, glass, clear except pupils. Papier mache, prepared. Pine board. Pins. Plaster, calcined. Tube paints. Varnish, clear white. Brushes.
PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTIONS—Try first a perch or other fish having scales firmly attached. See that the fins and tail are uninjured, and that no scales are missing from the side to be displayed. As every perfectly formed fish has both sides alike, and as ordinarily but one side can be seen at a time, only a little more than one half of the fish is to be mounted.
Note carefully the colors (including those of the eye and the interior of the mouth) of the freshly caught fish, making a sketch of the specimen, showing the extent of the different colors and markings, the spots, if any, and the eye. The pupil is not usually round. The eye of a lake trout appears like Fig. 1. A carefully kept note book is a valuable aid.
While the tail is of course a fin (the caudal), in this work it will be called the "tail," to distinguish it from the other fins. See Fig. 2 for key to the names of the fins.
