Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting / A Complete Handbook for the Amateur Taxidermist, Collector, Osteologist, Museum-Builder, Sportsman, and Traveller

by William T. Hornaday; W. J. Holland

It is a trifle more difficult to turn the skin over the head. Push it up from the back of the head with the thumb-nail, working it patiently, at all points, and stretching the skin gradually until it will pass over the widest part of the skull. Presently the crisis is past, the skin slips down without trouble, and we see by the way it is held at a certain point on each side of the head that we have come to the ears. Cut through the skin close up to the head, and a little farther on we reach the eyes.

Now be careful. Cut very slowly at the eye, and close to the head, until you can see through the thin membrane and define the exact position of the eyeball. Now cut through the membrane, but do not cut the eyelid on any account. A little farther and we come to the base of the bill, where the skin and our skinning stops.

Cut through the back of the skull so as to sever the head completely from the neck, and lay bare the base of the brain. Remove the brain from the skull; cut the eyes out of their sockets; cut out the tongue and remove all flesh from the skull.

Skin each wing down to the first joint, or the elbow, and stop the "wrong-side-out" process there. The ends of the secondaries must not be separated from the bone of the forearm, or the ulna. It is possible to clean out the flesh from the forearm and also from the arm bone (humerus) without detaching the ends of the secondaries, as you will readily see. Cut away any flesh which has been left at the root of the tail, but do not cut the ends of the tail feathers.

[a]Fig. 12.]—The Skin Wrong Side Out, and Ready to be Poisoned.

The next thing is to poison the skin. Do this with a mixture of powdered arsenic and alum, in equal parts. Some of our most extensive collectors use no alum, simply pure arsenic in liberal quantity; but I consider that the use of alum also is always desirable, and under certain conditions it is extremely so. Some collectors use arsenical soap exclusively, even on small birds, and on large birds I, too, have used it quite extensively, supplemented by an immediate sprinkling of powdered alum, to do the curing of the skin. For genuine thoroughness in poisoning and preserving, I will back arsenical soap and alum against all other substances the world can produce; but in treating small birds that are to be made up as dry skins, I prefer and recommend powdered arsenic and alum, as stated above.

Whatever poison you decide to use, apply it thoroughly to every part of the skin, the skull, wings, legs, and tail. Now put a ball of cotton in each eye-socket to fill up the cavity, and you are ready to reverse the skin and bring it right side out once more. It is usually some trouble to get the skin back over the skull, and that I accomplish in this wise:

Let the skin rest on the edge of the table, place both of your thumbs on the back of the skull, and with all your fingers and finger-nails, reach forward and begin to crowd the skin of the head back where it belongs. At the same time, you must push on the skull with your thumbs, as if trying to push it into the neck, and in a very short time, by a combination of coaxing and crowding, the skin made passes the critical point on the skull, and, presto! the whole skin is right side out once more. Now take it by the bill and give it a gentle shaking to stir up the feathers so that they will fall back naturally. Pluck outward the cotton in the orbit into the opening of the eye, to imitate the round fullness of the eyeball.

The wing bones of very small birds need not be wrapped with cotton, but the leg bones should be, always. Now take a bunch of cotton batting of the right size, and roll it between the palms until it attains the proper size to fill the neck, and is a trifle longer than the entire body and neck. Fold over one end of this, take it between the points of your forceps, insert it through the neck, and into the cavity of the skull. Tuck up the other end at the tail, and give the cotton body its right length. Then in the middle of the skin, pull the cotton roll apart sidewise, spread it out and lay on it a ball of cotton to form the body.