Practical taxidermy

by Montagu Browne

The bills of toucans, and similar birds, require some nice colouring to blend the various tints one within the other. If the reader requires a more scientific method of doing this, I must refer him to "Waterton's Wanderings in South America," in which work he will find an account of the manner in which that eccentric naturalist cut out the insides of his toucans' bills, paring them down to the outer layer, through which the subsequent artificially-introduced colour was revealed.

It would, no doubt, be possible to introduce colour into combs and wattles, and also into the bills of some species of birds by subcutaneous injections of various dyes when the specimen was fresh, but as all taxidermists are not skilled anatomists, and have not too much time to spare in doing what is — at best — but an unsatisfactory and unpractical method, I may relieve their anxiety by saying at once that the difficulty attendant on shrinkage of the integument may be avoided by using wax, with which to thinly paint the large bills of some birds, and the legs of all, restoring also the fleshy appearance of wattles, etc..

Let us take one or two representative birds -- first, an eagle, to work upon, Premising that your bird is finished and dry, and that you have previously accurately copied into your note-book the colours of the soft parts, you will begin by brushing over the parts to be coloured with a very little turpentine. Next, heat in a pipkin, or "patty-pan," some beeswax, into which a little common resin has been powdered, just sufficient to harden the wax under the point of brittleness; apply this with camel-hair brushes of different sizes to the eyelids (the eye being in and fixed), the superciliary ridge, the cere, the gape, and all over the bill, and legs, and feet, regulating the thickness of the wax thus — very thin over the bill and eyelids, a little thicker upon the cere, ridge, and gape, and quite thick upon the legs and feet; so much so, indeed, in places on the latter, as to necessitate carving up with tools to reproduce the underlying shrunken scutes, etc.. This, of course, is a delicate operation, involving practice and artistic perception of form.

Remove all superfluous wax by paring with curved awls of various sizes, and rubbing down with rag wetted in turpentine. Some parts of the legs may be treated with hot irons (large wires, old awls, knives, etc..). When the wax is sufficiently cold, which it will be in a quarter of an hour after finishing, commence colouring, by using the colours direct from the tubes, with as little admixture of "turps" as possible. [Footnote: Winsor and Newton, Rowney, or Roberson, are some of the best makers of these.] Note the different tints — quite three shades of yellow upon the cere, four or five upon the bill itself, and perhaps half-a-dozen upon the legs and feet, and carefully put them on. Properly finished, your eagle will — if correctly shaped — be quite life-like; all the soft parts now look full and fleshy, having lost that hard appearance inseparable from direct painting on the shrivelled integument without the intervention of wax.

The wattles and combs of gallinaceous birds, after being washed with preservative (Formula No. 15), or, when practicable, skinned out and filled, together with analogous processes on the vultures, and also the pouches of pelicans, etc.., may be treated in like manner, the wax being thinly or thickly painted as required.

The inside of the mouths of mammals, their tongues, eyelids, and noses, should be treated in a similar manner.

The skin of fishes also, which, when dry, shrinks away above the eye and around the mouth and lips, should have these parts replaced by wax before colouring, in the manner practised on the new specimens in the Leicester Museum. So little, however, is the want of this understood, that, of the thousands of stuffed fishes exhibited in the Fisheries Exhibition, I looked in vain for one with unshrivelled lips or orbital ridges. For the credit of artistic taxidermy, let us hope I overlooked some, finished as they should be.

The fins of fishes may be repaired with thin tissue paper, or, if finless by accident — "ware cat!" — may be replaced by wax. White wax may be coloured in some instances before using. Paraffin wax does in some situations, but is not a very tractable medium. Dry colours may sometimes be rubbed into the wax with advantage. The colouring of a fish's skin, which, when set up and dried, is colourless, as noted, is a nice operation involving some artistic ability; the same remarks apply as those upon the colouring of the bills and feet of birds (see ante), but with this difference, that although the colour should be thinly applied as directed, yet in this instance the appearance of wetness has to be represented. In ordinary taxidermic work this is managed by adding clear "paper" varnish, or "Roberson's medium," to the colours, thinned by turpentine, floating the tints on the skin of the specimen, and nicely blending them, in order to obviate unnatural streaks or bands of colour.

Speaking of the duck-billed platypus, the Rev. J. G. Wood, in "Homes without Hands," has some pertinent remarks upon the manner in which nearly all taxidermists allow the cuticle to dry and shrivel, to the ultimate distortion of the surrounding parts:

"The wonderful duck-like mandibles into which the head is prolonged are sadly misrepresented in the stuffed specimens which we generally see, and are black, flat, stiff, and shrivelled, as if cut from shoe leather. The dark colour is unavoidable, at all events in the present state of taxidermy. Bare skin invariably becomes blackish-brown by lapse of time, no matter what the previous colour may have been, so that the delicate tints of an English maiden's cheek and the sable hue of the blackest negro would in a few years assume the same dingy colour, and become quite undistinguishable from each other.