If the worker intends to mount only birds and small mammals, he will need but a very small portion of the tools and materials enumerated above. But fie! Where is the taxidermist worthy of the name who will admit that his resources are limited, or that he is not able and ready to "set up" any animal that may be brought to him, no matter how big or how bad it is. Perish the thought that he is not able to cope with dog, deer, or even elephant.
We now start on the supposition that you have acquired all the tools and materials you are likely to need, and that our subsequent work is not going to halt or hang fire on account of the lack of this or that article.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
PRELIMINARY WORK IN MOUNTING MAMMALS.
Relaxing Dry Skins.—Nearly all mammal skins that go from one country to another are sent in a dry state, and it is a rare exception to obtain a foreign skin in any other condition. It therefore behooves the mammal taxidermist to become a thorough expert in softening dry skins of all kinds and sizes, and bringing them into mountable condition.
To relax a dry skin, rip it open, remove the filling material, and immerse it in a weak but clean salt-and-alum bath (see Chapter IV.) until it becomes soft, be the time required three days or three weeks. If you are in a great hurry, soak the skin at first for a brief period in clear water, and if it is milk-warm, so much the better. Sometimes a skin is so old and hard and refractory that the bath of salt and alum seems to make no impression upon it, in which case try clear water. In a few hours it will yield and collapse, and then it must be put into the bath, or the water will soon macerate it, and cause the hair to slip off. You can leave the skin in the salt-and-alum bath as long as you choose without endangering it in any way.
The inside of every dry skin usually has over it a hard, inelastic coating which, when once gotten rid of by shaving or scraping, leaves the skin underneath measurably soft and elastic, according to its kind. If the skin is a small one, or no larger than that of a wolf, the best way to get it in working order is to lay it flat upon the table, and go at it vigorously with the skin-scraper (see Fig. 24). In this there must be no half-way measures, no modesty, no shirking. Bear on hard, dig away at the same spot with all your energy, first in one direction, then crosswise, then diagonally. Scrape as if you were scraping on a wager, and presently the skin will become so thinned down it will become quite soft, and even elastic. This is hard work, it starts the perspiration and keeps it going, but it will conquer the hardest skin that ever was made.
To make a skin sufficiently elastic to mount, it must be turned wrong-side out and scraped all over thoroughly with a skin-scraper, from nose to tip of tail, and phalanges. Small skins yield far more readily and kindly than the larger ones. The skins that are hardest, horniest, and most refractory are those of the capybara, all of the Suidæ (hogs), and tropical deer. I have mounted skins of these that when first softened were precisely like horn,—and at best with such subjects the resulting specimens are only "passable."
Sometimes when the scraper can make no impression, it becomes necessary to laboriously pare down the inside of an entire skin with the knife before scraping it. This is tedious, but effective, for a sharp knife leaves no room for argument.