In a museum group suppress all tendency to the development of violent action on the part of your specimens. In a well-regulated museum no fighting is allowed. Represent every-day, peaceful, home scenes in the lives of your animals. Seek not to startle and appal the beholder, but rather to interest and instruct him. Surely there are enough quiet and peaceful attitudes to supply all your specimens without exhausting the stock. Let them be feeding, walking, climbing up, lying down, standing on the alert, playing with each other, or sleepily ruminating—in fact, anything but fighting, leaping, and running. If you do not happen to know the habits of the animals which form the subject of your group, and it is impossible for you to learn them by observation, then must you throw aside all reserve, and appeal to some one who has seen and studied them in their haunts.
It is no child's play to prepare a group of large mammals. It invariably costs several hundreds of dollars, perhaps even thousands, and the work is supposed to last a century or longer. Judge, therefore, how important it is that every detail of the work should be absolutely above criticism. If you mount such a group in haste, you are certain to repent at leisure.
Having prepared your design, collected your specimens, and made all your studies for the entire group, the next step, of course, is mounting each individual specimen. It is an excellent plan, and one which we have found particularly satisfactory in grouping ruminants, to prepare all the manikins before putting any skin on permanently. We begin with the most important specimen. By mounting the manikins one by one, and grouping them, we are able to secure the precise artistic effect that was intended in our design. The grouping of the naked manikins from time to time enables you to eliminate errors, and make such changes in the attitudes as the eye may suggest.
A few facts in relation to the work done in setting up the buffalo group will serve as a fair index to work of this kind. Of course it is to be understood that every case is to have a wooden floor, and that one end can be opened bodily. Each of our buffaloes stood on a strong, thick base by itself, a rough pedestal, in fact, of a very substantial character. With pine boards we built a miniature hill, on which stands the spike bull, placed him upon it, and fastened him there permanently. The final work of arrangement was not undertaken until a trial grouping in the case had been satisfactorily made, and the exact position of each specimen definitely settled. A hole was cut in the bottom of the case, to give depth to the pool of water. The bottom of this pool was carefully modeled in papier-maché, and painted. The specimens standing farthest from the end containing the doors were first put in place, and the groundwork built up around them. The face of the cut bank was made by nailing wire cloth to a skeleton framework of boards, and covering this with a coarse sort of papier-maché, made of sawdust, plaster Paris, glue, and hair, and used in large quantities. As fast as a specimen was put in place and fastened, the rough groundwork of boards was covered with the papier-maché composition to make a perfectly smooth foundation to receive the prairie sod. From first to last, between three and four barrels of this coarse papier-maché was used. It was made to set quickly, and the modeling which was done on the surface of the cut bank, and in the bed of the stream, was done as soon as the soft material was put on. The surface of the pool was represented by a sheet of plate glass, a quarter of an inch thick. The entire groundwork of the case was covered with genuine prairie sod, each piece about one inch thick and a foot square, cut on the buffalo range in Montana, and shipped in barrels to Washington.
When this sod became perfectly dry, it lost all color and had the appearance of cured hay. In order to give it the right tone, it was necessary to spray it with a thin mixture of green paint in turpentine, to impart to it a pale green tint. As soon as the papier-maché was dry, the sod was cut neatly, matched carefully, and laid upon it—the joints being skilfully closed. A number of clumps of sage brush and bunches of broom sedge, grubbed up in Montana and carefully dried, were set here and there through the group. A bed of cactus was also introduced in the foreground. The sage brush required no preparation except to pack it carefully, and dry it after it reached Washington, with the branches in position. The leaves were of the right color when dry, and remained attached to the stems. Montana dirt was used in the bottom of the buffalo trail, and on the side of the cut bank. A few buffalo bones were stuck in the side of the bank to represent fossil bones as they are often seen protruding from the faces of cut banks in Montana. While the papier-maché around the edge of the pool was yet soft, tracks were made in it with genuine buffalo hoofs of various sizes, and many more tracks were made in the dust in the bottom of the buffalo trail. Of all the accessories in the buffalo case, everything in sight came from the Montana buffalo range, except the sheet of glass forming the surface of the pool.
PLATE XIX.
Drawn by C.B. Hudson.
[a]Group of American Bison in the National] [a]Museum.]—[a]Collected and Mounted by the Author.]
The last six months of my connection with the National Museum witnessed the completion of the great group of moose, which we began in 1889. In size and general make-up it is a companion piece to the group of buffaloes, and is a memorial worthy of the colossal species it represents. The setting represents a section of the moose woods of Upper Canada, in which the larger animals are browsing on the tender twigs of the white birch. The animals have come together at the edge of a bog, which is growing full of a gigantic species of grayish moss, peculiar to that locality. The time represented is the middle of autumn. The few leaves that remain on the maple saplings have been painted with October's most gorgeous tints of crimson and yellow, mixed with green, and the leaves of the white birch have turned pale yellow. The ground is plentifully strewn with leaves of bright tints, through which the green moss of moist banks shows in patches here and there.
Of the animals, the three largest—and huge beasts they are, truly—are feeding upon the birch twigs. A yearling calf is licking the head of a tiny brown-coated younger brother, while a two-year-old bull is in the act of "riding down" a stout birch sapling in order to get at the branches of its top, which would otherwise be beyond his reach.