I once spent a week of diligent labor in mounting over a clay-covered excelsior manikin the skin of a ten-and-a-half foot gray shark (Hexanchus griseus), which came to me in the flesh. It was a beautiful specimen, and I mounted it according to elaborate measurements, and a cast of the head. The result was all that could be desired. Three years later that shark was a sight to behold. Around the body, just back of the gill openings, the skin had burst open in a crack an inch wide. The tail had been ripped open by the terrible strain of shrinkage, so had the seam underneath the belly, and at first the damage seemed beyond repair. We did repair it, however, very fairly, but to me the specimen has ever since been an eyesore.
By the bitterest of experiences I have learned that a shark, ray, or saw-fish is bound to keep shrinking and shrinking, in both length and circumference, from the day it is finished to the crack of doom. The fins and tail will warp and twist out of shape, and I defy any man to prevent it. Since finding it impossible to mount a fish of this class substantially, and have it retain its original size, I have adopted a plan which allows shrinkage. The rod which supports the tail is fastened to the centre-board by two staples so loosely that when the strain of shrinkage comes upon it, it will gradually slip through the staples and allow the specimen to shorten instead of bursting.
It is best not to mount a shark too well. Stuff it with soft straw instead of making a firm manikin, and do not fill the body any harder than is necessary to secure smoothness. As the specimen gets old, and its circumference grows smaller by degrees, and beautifully (?) less, the mass of straw will also shrink to accommodate the lawless tendencies of the skin.
I have successively tried the effect of curing skins of sharks in brine, in alcohol, and in the salt-and-alum bath, but the result is always the same. It is easy enough to mount them to perfection, but to make them remain as mounted for five years is beyond my powers.
The rays are the meanest of all subjects that vex the soul of the taxidermist. Shun them as you would the small-pox or the devil. Such abominable animated pancakes, with razor edges that taper out to infinite nothingness, were never made to be mounted by any process known to mortal man. To mount the skin of a vile ray, and make it really perfect and life-like is to invite infinite shrinkage, rips, tears, warps, defeat, and humiliation at the hands of your envious rivals. If you must mount a ray, by all means get square with it at the start. Stuff his miserable old skin with tow or straw, the more the better. Ram him, cram him "full to the very jaws," like the famous rattlesnake skin that taxidermist Miles Standish stuffed "with powder and bullets." If you can burst him wide open from head to tail, by all means do so, and you may call me your slave for the rest of my life. Make him nice and round, like a balloon, and then no matter what he does afterward to mortify and disgrace you, and to drag your fair standard in the dust, you will always have the satisfaction of knowing you are square with him.
Once when I was young and innocent, I encountered an enormous ray. He was not thrust upon me, for I achieved him—and my own ruin also, at one fell stroke. I mounted him willingly, nay, eagerly, as Phæton mounted his chariot, to show the rest of the world how all rays should be done. I mounted his vast, expansive skin over a clay-covered manikin that had edges like a Damascus razor, and I made him flat. He was flat enough to navigate the Platte River at low water, which even a thick shingle can not do. He was life-like, and likewise was a great triumph. But almost the moment my back was turned upon him forever, he went back on me. I had put him up to stay put, so far as my part was concerned, so he just got mad and literally tore himself to tatters. He became almost a total wreck, and to make my defeat a more genuine and unmitigated crusher, Professor Ward sent word to me, all the way to Washington, that he would sell me that large ray for $5. I never forgave him for that.
The best way to mount a ray is to make a nice plaster cast of it, paint it, and then bury the accursed ray in a compost heap. As a class these fishes are remarkable, and highly interesting, and there is a far greater variety of them than anyone who is not an ichthyologist might suppose. To me there is no other group of fishes more interesting, and, I may add, there is no other group that is, as a general thing, so poorly represented in museum collections. They exhibit all possible intermediate forms between the ordinary shark and the perfectly round, flat ray. The intermediate forms, Rhynobatii and Rhamphobatis, are naturally the most interesting.
PLATE XV.
[a]American Lobster.—Showing Location of Wires.]