Game birds stuffed as "dead game" and hung in oval medallions form suitable ornaments for the billiard-room or hall if treated in an aesthetic manner. Not, however, in the manner I lately saw perpetrated by a leading London taxidermist--a game bird hanging in a prominent position, as if dead, from a nail, enclosed in an elaborate mount, the bird so beautifully sleek and smooth that, although it was hanging head downwards, not a feather was out of place! All was plastered down, and gravity and nature were utterly set at defiance. A little consideration, and a visit to the nearest poulterer's shop, would have prevented such a palpable error.
Kittens or puppies of a few days old, if nicely marked, can be stuffed and mounted on a piece of marble for paper weights, or on red cloth for penwipers.
The shells of small tortoises make tobacco pouches if lined with silk, as do also the skins of the feet of albatrosses (the long bones of the wings of these birds make pipe-stems) or squirrels mounted as a whole.
The shells of large tortoises make fancy baskets if the lower shell or plastron is sawn away, with the exception of the centre piece, which is left to form a handle. The shell may be lined with metal or with any other material or fabric desired.
Lobster claws make up as Punchinellos, or as old men and women, or — as exhibited at the Fisheries — handles of fish-knives and forks, tops of inkstands, paper weights, etc.. The uses of ivory, either in the rough, or sawn and polished, are too manifold to notice here.
FEATHER FLOWERS. — I have seen some splendid specimens of flowers (made from waste feathers of birds) brought from China, the Island of Ascension, and Brazil, but can give no directions for making them, further than to say that I should suppose anyone skilled in the making of such artificial flowers as are sold by the best milliners, or makers of wax flowers, would have but little difficulty in making up these beautiful objects.
This is, of course, but a précis of the various uses to which objects of natural history can be applied as means of ornament; and, indeed, so many branches are represented by this department of art that it would require a book double the size of the present, and written by experts of the various professions and trades concerned, to give a full history of the practical working of what is known as "Ornamental Taxidermy."
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[CHAPTER XV.
COLLECTING AND PRESERVING INSECTS.]
THE taxidermist will, in the course of his avocation, require to know something of various insects, their methods of capture, and how to preserve and utilise them in his profession.