In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

Wheeler, who had encouraged me to go to Milwaukee, also was the cause of my leaving. One year, while he was director, he went to Europe, and while abroad had a talk with Sir William Flower of the British Museum, in which Flower intimated that he would like me to go there. So I planned to quit Milwaukee and to go to London. However, I didn't immediately get any farther than Chicago. I stopped there and happened to go into the Field Museum of Natural History. It was then housed in the old art gallery of the Columbian Exposition. Professor Daniel G. Eliot was its curator of zoölogy. He offered me some taxidermy contracts on the spot and I accepted. While I was doing them he suggested that I go with him on an expedition to Africa. We started in 1896.

When we got back from that trip I continued at the Field Museum as chief of the Department of Taxidermy. Before leaving Milwaukee I had been working on an idea of four deer groups, to be called the "Four Seasons," to show the animals in natural surroundings of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. I collected a good deal of the necessary material and put a lot of work on the project in my own shop, and finally reached a point where it became necessary for me to know whether the museum was going to want the groups or not. I approached the curator of zoölogy. He said that he would recommend the purchase of one of the four. Later I saw the president of the museum. After some discussion he asked why it was that the museum couldn't have the four groups. I gave him every assurance that it could. I spent four years on these four groups. It wouldn't take so long now but at that time we had not only to make the groups but also to perfect the methods of doing it at the same time. Four years is a long time to take on four deer groups, but the number of things in taxidermy we worked out in doing those groups made it a very full four years' work. In fact, the method finally used for mounting those deer groups is the method still in use.

Briefly, that method is this: For each animal a rough armature was made, on which a life-sized clay model was shaped just like a clay model made for casting in bronze except that to facilitate accuracy the skull and leg bones of the animal were used. This model was checked by measurements made of the dead animal in the field, by photographs, and frequently by anatomical casts made in the field. The final result was a model not only of the species but of the actual animal whose skin we were going to use. All this took a lot of time, study, and money, and it was quite a different thing from stuffing a skin with rags and straw. For a temporary effect the skin could be mounted on the clay model, but an animal so mounted would deteriorate. For permanent work it was necessary to devise some light, durable substance, which would not be affected by moisture, to take the place of the clay of the manikin. After a lot of experimentation I came to the conclusion that a papier-mâché manikin reënforced by wire cloth and coated with shellac would be tough, strong, durable, and impervious to moisture. It isn't possible to model papier-mâché with the hands as one moulds clay, so the problem resolved itself into making a plaster mould of the clay model and then using that to build the papier-mâché manikin. When a man wishes to make a bronze in a mould he can pour the melted metal into the mould and when it has cooled remove the mould. But you can't pour papier-mâché reënforced with wire cloth and if you put it into a plaster-of-paris mould it will stick. The solution of this difficulty struck me suddenly one day when I was riding into town to go to the museum.

"I've got it!" I exclaimed, to the amusement of my friends and the rest of the car full of people. As soon as I could get to my shop I tried it and it worked. It was to take the plaster moulds of the clay model and coat the inside of them with glue. On this glue I laid a sheet of muslin and worked it carefully and painstakingly into every undulation of the mould. On this went thin layers of papier-mâché with the wire cloth reënforcement likewise worked carefully into every undulation of the mould. Every layer of the papier-mâché composition was carefully covered with a coating of shellac so that each layer, as well as the whole, was entirely impervious to water. For animals the size of a deer two layers of reënforced composition give strength enough. For animals the size of an elephant four are sufficient and four layers are only about an eighth of an inch thick. When the final coat of shellac was well dried I immersed the whole thing in water. The water affected nothing but the thin coating of glue between the mould and the muslin. That melted and my muslin-covered, reënforced papier-mâché sections of the manikin came out of the plaster mould clean and perfect replicas of the original clay model. The four sections of the manikin were assembled with the necessary leg irons and wooden ribs and the whole was ready for the skin.

The combination of glue and muslin was the key to the whole problem. The manikin so made is an absolutely accurate reproduction of the clay model, even more accurate than bronze castings for there is no shrinkage. The manikin of a deer so constructed weighs less than thirty pounds, but it is strong enough to hold a man's weight. I have sat on the back of an antelope mounted in this manner and done it no harm. Moreover, it is entirely made of clean and durable materials. There is nothing to rot or shrink or to cause shrinkage or decay in the skin. Of the animal itself only the shells of the hoofs and horns, and the skin are used, and the skin is much more carefully cleaned and tanned than those of women's furs. An animal prepared in this way will last indefinitely. This was a long step from the methods we used at Ward's of filling a raw skin with greasy bones of the legs and skull and stuffing the body out with straw, excelsior, old rags, and the like.

I believe that there has not yet been devised a better method of taxidermy than that described here and its use has become almost universal. Although it does not take much time to tell about it, the mounting of an animal in this way is a long and tedious process. Moreover, it is hard work. Consequently, but few of the people using it do a thoroughly constructed manikin. In an attempt to save time and money cheaper processes are resorted to and many animals, mounted by methods that only approximate that which I have evolved, fail to show good results. When the method was first introduced at the American Museum of Natural History, the authorities objected to its expense, and to cut down the cost a light plaster cast, believed to be "just as good," was substituted for the manikin. Many specimens mounted in this manner have since been thrown on the dump heap.

I finally got the four deer groups finished and the Field Museum bought them at the price agreed upon. When I figured it out financially I found that I had come out even on my expenditures for labour and materials but for my own time and for profit there was nothing. However, I had the experience and the method and I felt that it was a pretty good four years' work.

In the old days at Ward's a taxidermist was a man who took an animal's skin from a hunter or collector and stuffed it or upholstered it. By the time I had finished the deer groups I had become pretty well convinced that a real taxidermist needed to know the technique of several quite different things.

First, he must be a field man who can collect his own specimens, for other people's measurements are never very satisfactory, and actual study of the animals in their own environment is necessary in making natural groups.

Second, he must know both animal anatomy and clay modelling in order to make his models.