The best of all ways to procure specimens for groups is to go into the field, find them in their haunts, study them alive, study their habitat and their habits; shoot, measure, and preserve them with your own hands. If you are unable to do this yourself, then it must be done for you by some competent person, under your direction. In procuring young animals, which are very necessary in nearly all groups for scientific purposes, the greatest vigilance is required to enable the collector to secure the specimens just when they reach the right age and size.
Design.—When you have determined to prepare a group of a certain species, study the character and size of the subjects to compose it, and then begin by sketching, to the best of your ability, a design in which each specimen shall have its place and attitude. In the preparation of large groups, I have always found the satisfactory arrangement of the specimens the most puzzling and perplexing feature of the work. But however difficult it may be to satisfy myself with a design, I never proceed with a group until the composition of my sketch group is satisfactory. The two largest and finest specimens in a group should constitute its central and commanding figures. Put as little life as possible in the corners of a group, and by all means make the specimens show an interest in, and a relation to, each other. The design must be dominated by one central idea or purpose, which should never be lost sight of in the arrangement of the group. It is unnecessary to say that each group should form a perfect picture, compact, well rounded, and the relationship of the different specimens to each other should be so clearly defined as to leave no room for the suggestion that the specimens have been mounted independently, and simply placed together.
Space.—No matter how small or large a group may be, to be perfect in effect it must have abundant case-room. Let there be some room to spare in the corners and above the group. The top of the case should by all means be of glass. An airy, light, out-door effect can not be secured in a small, cramped cage, in which the specimens appear like caged circus animals. If you wish to have your specimens look alive, and as if they are really on their native heath, they must not be "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd."
Accessories.—Although poor accessories are better than none, you will, of course, have them all as nearly perfect as possible. Spare neither time, trouble, nor expense in procuring the finest collection of accessories that you can possibly gather. Do not think you must be satisfied with the first that comes to hand, but search far and wide until you have obtained precisely what you want. Do not be too lavish in the use of accessory material. Remember that enough is as good as a feast, and too much is good for nothing. There are two principles, either one of which can govern you in your selection of accessory material. One is to select a given spot of ground of precisely the same area as the section you propose to use as the groundwork of your group, and reproduce only such materials as are found on that particular square of mother earth. This is the idea which has been strictly followed in the preparation of the groups of birds in the American Museum of Natural History by Mr. Richardson. I hold to a different principle. I believe that it is best to select from a given locality such material as will best represent an ideal section of the country to be represented as the habitat of the group. Of course, it is necessary to exercise care not to bring together too great an assortment of materials. By acting on this principle we secure a limited selection of the most common and familiar species of plants in a given locality, and at the same time have the advantage of arranging them for the best artistic effect on the ground which has been prepared to accommodate the group according to the design. With small groups, in which a nest or burrow is to be represented, it is an easy and simple matter to reproduce the exact situation in which the home of the animal was situated. In the preparation of large groups this is a practicable impossibility.
Special Exhibition Groups.—To this class properly belongs such subjects as Verreaux's "Arab Courier attacked by Lions;" Edwin Ward's "Lion and Tiger Struggle;" and the two groups, "Lions Fighting" and "Horseman attacked by Tigers," prepared by John Wallace, of New York. Such groups are bold in design, theatrical in effect, and each one is supposed to represent a tour de force on the part of the originator. They are valuable for great expositions, for show-windows, fairs, crystal palaces, and the like. For such purposes the more startling they are, the better. Animals are usually chosen which will admit of a representation of vigorous action. The most favorite theme is large animals in combat. He who has the boldness to introduce the human form divine in such a composition will oftener than otherwise have occasion to wish he hadn't. The human figure is, at best, a difficult subject to handle, and in its introduction with mounted quadrupeds the designer often finds, to his sorrow, how very short is the step from the sublime to the ridiculous. In general I should say that the human figure is an excellent thing to leave out of a group of mounted quadrupeds, unless it happens to be an Esquimau completely enveloped in thick furs. In the preparation of groups of this class, the ambitious taxidermist has before him almost as great a variety of subjects as has the sculptor, since his work is subject to precisely the same general rules.
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
GROUPS OF MAMMALS.
Grouping Small Mammals.—Since our small mammals can not migrate south in winter, as do the birds, each species must provide itself with a winter home, or perish. The nesting and burrowing habits of these builders of "homes without hands" afford a most interesting field for investigation and study, and one which is of great interest to everyone. Almost without exception, every mammalian species found in the United States below the size of the coyote, establishes for itself during a part, if not the whole, of the year, a fixed habitation. Some of the more enterprising species, notably the squirrels and rabbits, enjoy the luxury of a summer residence as well as a winter home. The groups of small mammals which the National Museum is now producing and placing upon exhibition have for one of their principal features the illustration of the homemaking habits of the species represented. A mention of one or two examples will serve to convey an idea of the type of each class.
A group of American opossums may be taken as a good example. The case which encloses the entire group is 4 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet high. The frame of the case is as light as possible, and all four sides and the top are of glass. On the side of a sloping bank stands the base of a small gum-tree, with the roots on the lower side exposed by the crumbling away of the bank. Of course the trunk rises to the top of the case, where it is cut squarely off. At the bottom of the sloping bank, between two of the roots, is an opening, which is recognized at once as the doorway to the opossum's home. The burrow winds upward between the roots of the tree, and finally turns off to the left into the bank, where, after running through a passage-way of two or three feet in length, the nest itself is found. It is in a pocket-like excavation, and a circular section is cut out of the front of the bank so as to make an opening through which the nest can be seen. The nest is lined with dead leaves, in which lies an opossum curled up and sound asleep. At the back of the case a sectional view of the bank is represented, and by means of an opening cut here and there, the course of the burrow is plainly seen. In the foreground is an old mother opossum with several young ones riding on her back, clinging to her gray coat, while the head of another protrudes from her pouch. This represents the manner in which the opossum carries her young after they have reached a certain age. From a small branch hangs another opossum, suspended by its prehensile tail, sprawling in mid-air. This specimen is a female, and shows the size and location of the wonderful marsupial pouch. Another individual is climbing up the trunk of the tree. A fourth specimen, which has been disturbed by another, is pausing to protest with widely opened mouth, while in the act of creeping into the mouth of the burrow.