The Boy's Own Book of Indoor Games and Recreations / A Popular Encyclopædia for Boys

by C. Stansfeld Hicks; John Nevil Maskelyne; Gordon Stables

Let us begin by imagining the keeper has brought in a fine large poaching cat. Take the beast to an out-house, and in the shade lay it on its back, and with a butcher’s, or indeed any sharp knife, make a long, straight, but not too deep cut, from the centre of the lower jaw to the end of the tail. Then cut down the legs on the underneath side till the cut down the centre of the body is reached. Now separate the skin from the body. If the animal has been badly shot, wash the skin thoroughly in cold soap and water. Place it in water for twenty-four hours. Then take it out and scrape it well from any fat; skin the ears on the inside and plunge it into a hot solution of one part salt and two parts alum, and let it soak well in. The solution should not be hotter than the hand can bear, and the skin should be left in it twenty-four hours. Then stretch the skin, hair downwards, on a board, nailing it with tacks round the edge. Be careful to get it the proper shape, and that one side is not more stretched than the other. Next apply a paste made of one part finely powdered alum, two parts chalk. When this is dry beat it off with a stick, and apply some more where the skin seems still to contain grease. After this remove the skin from the board when quite dry, and the more it is rubbed with the hand, the softer it will become.

Another process is to wash the skin well, and to peg it out on the ground or on a board, to rub it well with wood ashes, and to sprinkle it with carbolic acid and water in proportion of one part to thirty. Next with a knife cleanse the skin most thoroughly of every particle of flesh and fat, and rub in more wood ash till there is no grease left. Then keep the skin perfectly dry till you have an opportunity of sending it to a tanner’s. But no skin or fur, whether tanned or not, should ever be put in the sun. A good shaking and hanging out in the air is the best thing for it.

It is obvious that if a skin is to be used as a rug, the use of arsenic or other poisons is out of the question, though where an animal is to be set up and put in a glass case, like a weazel or a stoat, this rule does not apply. In this latter case an incision is made between the forelegs and down the belly, large enough to allow of the animal’s body being extracted. The skin, when properly cleaned from fat and flesh, is plunged into cold carbolic acid and water, in the proportion of one part carbolic to forty of water. After lying in this for a week, it can be taken out and freely anointed with arsenical soap previous to setting up.

And now for the treatment of the head of a horned animal. Within six or eight hours of the death of the beast, cut off the head with a long neck. Cut the skin down the back of the neck as far as the two horns. Should the animal have no horns, this is unnecessary; should it have spiral horns, cut only up to one and round the other. Then remove the skin entirely from the skull, taking care that the skin round the eyes does not get injured, as it is a most delicate place, the skin there is so thin, and lies so close to the bone. Hang the head up in the outhouse and scrape and clean at leisure. Saw off a bit of the skull, and remove the brains. On no account lose the lower jawbones when they become detached.

Horns that will come off the bone, such as antelope’s, sheep’s, or goat’s, soak for a day or two in a tub of water a week or two after the animal has been killed.

Wash the skin well in soap and water, removing all the bits of meat. Split the lips and skin up the ears from the inside as far as you can, removing as much meat from them as can be filled in afterwards with cotton wool and not detected from the outside when the head is set up. Then place the skin in a jar of carbolic acid and water, enough to cover it, and let it remain there for six or eight weeks, until opportunity occurs to set up the head. It could even be packed up and sent away like this, as it were, in pickle. If the skin be much stained with extravasated blood, a few hours’ soaking in water will draw it out.

Next for the setting-up process. Take the skull, and fasten the upper and lower jaws in their places with wire. Set the skull on a wooden neck, the same length as the natural one, and set this neck on to a wooden shield to hang against the wall. Be careful to set the neck at a natural angle to the head. A deer holds his nose very high; a pig very low. If preferred, the shield can be dispensed with, and the staple by which to hang the head fixed in the wooden neck through the skin.

In many instances a solid wooden neck would be too heavy; but a small one filled out with tow, and fastened into the hole in the skull through which the brains were extracted, will answer the purpose just as well.

Fill the cavities in the skull for the eyes with putty, and put some wool under the jaws, some putty to form the nose, and enough to give a thickness to the nose. Then insert the glass eyes, which, in the case of a large animal, can be made from French wine bottles by breaking out the kick at the bottom. But manufactured eyes are much preferable. I have frequently bought cases of white glass eyes and painted them at the back the right colour. While on the subject of eyes, it may be mentioned that carnivorous animals have the light in the eye down the eye from top to bottom, while granivorous animals have it across.

Next take the skin out of the solution and smear the inside well with a paste of arsenical soap. Put some wool into the ears, and draw the skin over the skull like a glove. Sew up the cut at the back with a shoemaker’s awl. With a few tacks nail the skin on to the shield, and put a few stitches into the mouth to keep it properly closed.