An old sculptor, living at Lahaye, devoted himself to the practice of taxidermy, and in a short time surpassed all those who had employed themselves in mounting animals, especially large mammalia.
It seems that neither the English nor the Dutch have published any work which treats of the method of mounting animals according to system.
In 1801 we were not more advanced than they were. What we possessed of this kind appeared insufficient to amateurs. Notwithstanding, many derived advantage from the memoir of Mauduyt, but being inserted in the "Encyclopédie Méthodique," it was not always easy to procure it. There was, besides, only the work of Abbé Manesse, and the tediousness of the means which he pointed out frightened all those who desired to learn taxidermy. The professors of natural history to the central schools of the departments felt more than ever the want of a work which furnished the method of preserving and augmenting their zoological collections. In 1802 their wishes were nearly accomplished, for there appeared almost at the same time two works on taxidermy, the one by M. Nicholas, a chemist, the other by M. Henon. M. Nicholas makes an analysis of all that had been said before on the preparation of animals. This view comprehends nearly half the volume.
Bécoeur, of Metz, was the best apothecary in that city. He mounted fresh birds in the greatest perfection, and by a little practice one is sure to succeed with his method. He opened his birds in the usual manner, that is to say, by the middle of the belly. He easily took out the body by this opening without cutting any of the extremities; he then removed the flesh by the aid of a scalpel, taking the precaution to preserve all the ligaments; he anointed the skin, and put the skeleton in its place, carefully dispersing the feathers on each side. He ran the head through with an iron wire, in which he had formed a little ring at nearly the third of its length; the smallest side passed into the rump in such a manner that 'the ring of the iron wire was under the sternum. He then passed a wire into each claw, so that the extremities of the wire united to pass into the little ring; he bent these extremities within, and fixed them with a string to the iron in the middle of the vertebral column. He replaced the flesh by flax, or chopped cotton, sewed up the bird, placed it on a foot or support of wood, and gave it a suitable attitude, of which he was always sure — for a bird thus mounted could only bend in its natural posture (?). He prepared quadrupeds in the same manner.
It remains for us to speak of a little work published by Henon and Mouton Fontenelle. They had at first no other object than to read their manuscript to the Athenaeum at Lyons, of which they were members. They were earnestly solicited to print it, and published it in 1802. The authors speak of birds only. They describe an infinity of methods practised by others, and compare them to their own, which, without doubt, are preferable, but too slow to satisfy the impatience of ornithologists.
The book from which I have just quoted seems to have been the only reliable text book known at that period, and with the exception of certain modern improvements in modelling and mounting, contains a mass of — for that day — valuable elementary information. In fact, the French and German taxidermists were then far in advance of us, a stigma which we did not succeed in wiping off until after the Great Exhibition of 1851.
Although, as I have just said, the French and Germans excelled us in the setting up of specimens, yet their collections did not, in all cases, exceed ours in point of interest or magnitude, for the old taxidermists had been at work prior to 1725, at which date it is recorded that the museum of Sir Hans Sloane (the nucleus of our British Museum collection) contained the following number of specimens: Mammals, 1194; birds, 753; reptiles, 345; fishes, 1007. A gradual increase appeared by 1753, when the figures stood: Mammals, 1886; birds, 1172; reptiles, 521; fishes, 1555. A great proportion of these were, however, not stuffed specimens, but simply bones and preparations of fleshy parts in spirits. Nothing shows the gradual rise and progress of taxidermy better than the history of the British Museum, which, under the then name of Montagu House, was opened to the public by special ticket on Jan. 15, 1759.
Soon after its opening the natural history collections appear to have claimed more interest from the public, for in 1765 we had a very good collection of butterflies, and in 1769 the trustees acquired, by purchase, a considerable collection of stuffed birds from Holland. The restrictions on visitors were, however, vexatious, people of all classes being hurried through the rooms at a tremendous speed — vide Hutton, the Birmingham historian, who visited it in 1784, and relates how he would fain have spent hours looking at things for which only minutes were allowed. From this period up to 1816 (at which date the valuable ornithological collection of Col. Montagu was purchased for the nation at a cost of £11,000) the additions to the natural history galleries were not many, probably owing to the troublous times; however, when we had succeeded in breaking the power of Napoleon and restored peace to Europe, naturalists and taxidermists found that the public had then time and inclination to devote themselves to their collections or works.
Accordingly, during the next twenty years many works (including those before noted) were written on taxidermy, the most notable being by Swainson, Brown, and that eccentric genius Waterton, whom we may call the pioneer of our present system of mounting, and who, in his usual caustic style, pointed out the very inferior way in which specimens were then mounted.
At the end of his "Wanderings in South America" appeared a treatise on Taxidermy, but, as he decried the use of arsenical preparations, and mounted his birds without wires in a fashion peculiar to himself, his system did not find favour in the eyes of the school of rigid stuffing, who had not then worked out the present happy compromise between his style and theirs. His patience must have been inexhaustible; indeed, the Rev. J. G. Wood, who knew him well, has told me of many instances in which he spent days in scraping out the hands and feet of the larger apes until he got them as thin as paper, and also of his delight when he invented the kid-glove substitute for a peacock's face much to the astonishment of the reverend gentleman. Of course; all these works on the preservation of natural history objects and the labours of collectors directed the public mind to the contemplation of natural history.