With these great birds it is best to open the skin of each leg from the lower end of the tibia all the way down to the foot, in order to entirely remove the tendons. Detach the skin from the bone all the way round, and cure it with arsenical soap and a little alum. The leg should be cut open on the inside, well back, where the seam will be most out of sight. After having removed a skin, you will need to keep it soft, sometimes for several days, perhaps until you can make a suitable manikin, if it is a large ostrich. Cure the skin with arsenical soap and salt (protecting the feathers carefully meanwhile), and keep it wrapped up and away from the air until you are ready to put it on the manikin for the last time; then treat it with dry alum to make it dry and harden properly.
Order Sphenisci: The Penguins.—The penguin of the Antarctic seas is the king of fat birds, but such magnificent monsters as those brought home by the Challenger, and now in the British Museum, are worth a long trip to secure. Mr. Frederick Pearcy, who collected and preserved the specimens, assured me that it required two men to carry one, and that the removal of the grease from the skins was a dreadful task. Of the largest specimens, the huge legs and feet were cut off at the lower end of the tibiæ, and preserved in alcohol until they could be skinned and cleaned. Since it is probable that only a very few of my readers will ever visit the rainy, foggy, storm-beaten and God-forsaken land of the penguin, I will leave the question of grease removal to the paragraph relating to the Lamellirostres.
Longipennes: The Gulls, Albatrosses, etc.—The gulls, terns, and petrels are so beautiful in flight that they are often mounted with the wings fully spread, in flying attitudes. When a bird is to be mounted thus, the large wing-bones must not be broken, but simply disjointed and cut loose from the body at the shoulders. When it is possible to do so, an albatross should be mounted with wings, outspread, to reveal to the student their enormous length, and the disproportionate shortness of the primaries and secondaries. If all the albatrosses in a museum collection are mounted with closed wings, as they nearly always are, the average observer gains not the faintest conception of the form and size of the bird in motion—its normal condition.
Steganopodes: The Pelicans.—The great white pelican is one of the most satisfactory and even agreeable birds to mount that could possibly fall into the hands of an able-bodied taxidermist. If I ever adopt a shield and an assortment of devices with which to cover it, one of the latter shall be a figure of a huge white pelican rampant; for it was a bird of that species that gave me a start in taxidermy. It happened in this wise:
The year before I penetrated the walls of my Alma Mater, its venerable president sought to find among the students an (alleged) taxidermist, or at least the promise of one. He publicly offered the princely sum of $10 to any one who could come forward and mount a bird decently. The gauntlet thus recklessly thrown down no one could pick up that year, and by the year following, when I appeared upon the scene, it had grown cold. Like another Lochinvar, I "came late" for that offer. I had seen one bird skinned and mounted, and I knew I could do one like it. That was an old, rusty, second-hand crow. I petitioned to have a chance to "stuff birds," but it fell on deaf ears. I even went so far as to mount a squirrel, to show what I could do, and although it was a very fair specimen for that benighted period, it failed to win.
But one day some good genius sent a dead bird to the president, for the museum, and with it heaven sent my opportunity. Professor Bessey sent for me and said, "Now, young man, we are going to see how much you know about stuffing birds. We've got a specimen for you to try your hand on, and if you succeed in mounting it decently, you may possibly get an opportunity to work in the museum." I replied, "Show me the victim."
He took me to his room, and there, spread out upon the carpet, lay an enormous white pelican. His body was like a great downy pillow, his bill was as long as a fence-rail, with a great horny knot atop of it, and his huge yellow pouch would have held a whole school of mackerel, teachers and all. And what wings! They were full-grown angel's size, and as white and spotless as Gabriel's own. It seemed like sacrilege to touch them. And such feet! Enough of them would have covered the college campus. I had never before seen such a bird, even in my dreams. He really was larger than the maximum measurements given by Audubon for that species. Professor Bessey informed me that his name was Pelicanus erythrorhynchos. It was not quite so long as his bill, nor so rough, but it was pretty nearly.
With a pocket-knife, an old misfit pair of pliers, and a smooth, flat piece of steel that had once been a file, I skinned and mounted that bird, "in the highest style of the art," as the taxidermic business card always hath it. I have also faint recollections of a great wad of oakum made into a body, a thimbleful of arsenic, and a pair of eyes—merely this and nothing more. As I hope to live, I believe I could feed a live pelican as much arsenic as I put upon that great skin without even giving him the stomach-ache; but the bugs seemed to know that was my first effort, and they have never touched him. I mounted him as the Irishman played the fiddle at Donnybrook fair, neither by note nor by ear, but, "be jabers, by main strength," and posed and shaped him by Audubon's superb plate. He was pronounced an unqualified success. I shaped his future, and he shaped mine at the same time. When I saw him again, seven years later, he was every bit as good as new, and I was astonished to find how really good he was. He was the first bird I ever skinned or mounted, and a lucky bird he was for me. Had he been a dirty, greasy, old swan, think what a scrape I should have been in!
Lamellirostres: The Ducks, Geese, Swans (and Flamingoes).—There are but two points to be spoken of under this head. The first is that all the birds of this order must have their heads skinned through a slit at the back of the head. The other is in regard to cleaning.
All ducks, geese, and swans are very fat, even when they are poorest. Were they otherwise, they could not live on the water as they do. Nearly the whole body is enveloped in a firm, tenacious layer of fat, into which the ends of the body feathers run and take root, and bind the skin itself down so firmly that it really becomes a part of the fatty layer. To remove the skin, you must have a keen knife, and by hard labor slice through the fat as you go. As a general thing, it is slow and tedious work. When you begin, and all the way as you proceed, use plenty of plaster Paris or cornmeal to absorb the free oil, and keep it off the feathers.