To soak up a dried bird skin for preparation to mount, the simplest and quickest means is immersion in a weak solution of carbolic acid in water, leaving for a day or two until tissues are soft.
When the skin is relaxed so that wings and legs may be manipulated without breaking, squeeze water from it and follow same method given for cleaning a fresh skin. With this treatment a good dry skin will come out as soft and workable as a fresh one. Arsenic and grease burnt skins are hard to get much out of.
To make up dry bird skins for keeping to mount at a future time, follow regular method of thorough skinning and cleaning. Apply dry arsenic powder to inner surfaces. Wrap skull, wing, and leg bones lightly with cotton or tow. Turn skin right side out and push a neck and light body filling of fiber that will allow ventilation, into place. Arrange the plumage and hang the skin up by a thread or cord sewn through neck at base of skull.
To make a cabinet skin for study purposes, roll a neat body and neck of material to suit size of bird, place it inside the skin, stitch incision together, plug eye sockets with cotton, tie the elbows together on the body with a loop sewn through the back, tie bill shut, adjust feathers neatly and lay the specimen in a hollowed bed made of a piece of wire netting bent to size. See that wings cover back neatly. Lay head of short necked bird out straight, neck somewhat shorter than natural, and of long necked specimen along right side, looped to body with cord sewn through neck and side. Cross the feet and tie with a tag bearing complete data as to locality, date, sex, etc., with collector's name. To determine sex of a bird specimen, open the abdomen under thigh. Testes of male will be found under fore end of pelvis and are white, in young bird, very small.
Now when the period of drying is past, return to the mounted bird for finishing touches. With scissors cut the thread feather wrappings. Pull out pins in back and breast and cut off wing pinning-wires flush under the plumage. If the specimen was primarily mounted on a rough temporary perch, remove to the finished permanent stand and color legs and fleshy, exposed parts of face skin to natural hues with tube oil colors and a soft brush. Thin the color for this purpose with a little turpentine and a very little touch of varnish.
In all work in taxidermy, practice develops deftness and a personal system of handling the details that cannot be brought about except by sympathetic attention to the art. The work is not difficult when the details are addressed with quiet thought and very little main strength.
