PLATE XIV.
[a]Mounting an Alligator.—Last Stage.]
Fig. 19 shows the underside of a turtle, and the dotted line indicates where the cut has been made in the skin near the posterior edge of the plastron, where the shell bridge that unites the upper with the under shell has been sawn through with a small saw. The process of skinning such a subject has been already described, and the process of mounting is to be carried out on precisely the same general principles as described and illustrated in the mounting of mammals with long hair, with but slight variations.
After the legs and neck have been made with tow, the tow wrapping should be covered with a quarter of an inch of soft clay, so the skin can afterward be modeled down upon it, either smoothly or wrinkled, as in life. The body should be stuffed with straw to keep the shell from collapsing while drying. The divided portions of the shell must then be joined and wired together firmly with soft brass wires passed through small holes, as shown in the figure. Of course, the cuts in the skin must be sewn up neatly but firmly.
When the specimen has been placed on its pedestal, it then remains to shape the legs, neck, and feet, which the soft clay underneath renders quite easy. Folds and wrinkles in the skin must be exaggerated, to provide for what is sure to disappear by shrinkage in drying.
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
MOUNTING FISHES.
General Observations.—Judging from specimens generally, it would seem that taxidermists, the world over, either do not know how to mount fish specimens with the same degree of excellence as mammals and birds, or else they are universally slighted by intention. Certain it is, that in nearly every large zoological museum the stuffed fishes are the least attractive, and the least like life of all the vertebrates. In many instances the reptiles are not far behind in unsightliness, although as a rule they are a little more life-like than the fishes. In only one natural history museum out of twenty-seven have I found a collection of stuffed fishes which surpassed in number and quality of specimens the collection of birds and mammals, and formed the most attractive feature of the entire museum. That fish collection is to be seen in the Government Museum at Madras, India.