Fig. 171.—Setting-board with butterflies
properly "spread." (After
Comstock.)
"Soft specimens" such as insect larvæ, myriapods, and spiders should be preserved in bottles of alcohol (85 per cent). Nests, galls, stems, and leaves partly eaten by insects, and other dry specimens can be kept in small pasteboard boxes.
For a good and full account of insect-collecting and preserving, with directions for making insect-cases, etc., see Comstock's "Insect Life," pp. 284-314.
Birds.—In collecting birds, shooting is chiefly to be relied on. Use dust-shot (the smallest shot made) in small loads. For shooting small birds it is extremely desirable to have an auxiliary barrel of much smaller bore than the usual shotgun which can be fitted into one of the regular gun-barrels. In such an auxiliary barrel use 32-calibre shells loaded with dust-shot instead of bullets. Plug up the throat and vent of shot birds with cotton, and thrust each bird head downward into a cornucopia of paper. This will keep the feathers unsoiled and smooth.
Birds should be skinned soon after bringing home, after they have become relaxed, but before evidences of decomposition are manifest. The tools and materials necessary to make skins are scalpel, strong sharp-pointed scissors, bone-cutters, forceps, corn-meal, a mixture of two parts white arsenic and one part powdered alum, cotton, and metric-system measure. Before skinning, the bird should be measured. With a metric-system measure carefully take the alar extent, i.e. spread from tip to tip of outstretched wings; length of wing, i.e. length from wrist-joint to tip; length of bill in straight line from base (on dorsal aspect) to tip; length of tarsus, and length of middle toe and claw.
To skin the bird, cut from anus to point of breast-bone through the skin only. Work skin away on each side to legs; push each leg up, cut off at knee-joint, skin down to next joint, remove all flesh from bone, and pull leg back into place; loosen skin at base of tail, cut through vertebral column at last joint, being careful not to cut through bases of tail-feathers; work skin forward, turning it inside out, loosening it carefully all around, without stretching, to wings; cut off wings at elbow-joint, skin down to next joint and remove flesh from wing-bones; push skin forward to base of skull, and if skull is not too large (it is in ducks, woodpeckers, and some other birds), on over it to ears and eyes; be very careful in loosening the membrane of ears and in cutting nictitating membrane of eyes; do not cut into eyeball; remove eyeballs without breaking; cut off base of skull, and scoop out brain; remove flesh from skull, and "poison" the skin by dusting it thoroughly with the powdered arsenic and alum mixture. Turn skin right side out, and clean off fresh blood-stains by soaking them up with corn-meal; wash off dried blood with water, and dry with corn-meal. Corn-meal may be used during skinning to soak up blood and grease.
Fig. 172.—Setting-board in cross-section to show construction. (After Comstock.)