This is no fancy picture, for it fairly represents the condition of many a buffalo, deer, and moose that I have been called upon to either dismount, remount, or destroy. A dishonest taxidermist may slight the interior work of a specimen and have it escape detection for six months, or even a year, but time soon tells the story. Dishonest or careless work, like murder, will out. In a bird, it expresses itself in a look of roughness, and a general falling away from grace at all points.
To secure perfect stability and permanence in a mounted specimen, observe conscientiously the following principles in its construction:
1. Pare every skin down thin, so that its shrinking power will be reduced to a minimum. This will prevent its seams from opening.
2. Poison with the utmost thoroughness, so that even though the specimen should chance to stand unprotected for years where insect pests are thickest, they can find nothing to feed upon in its hair or feathers.
3. Use heavy supporting irons or wires, as heavy as the specimen will accommodate without sacrificing the form and position of legs and feet. The fault of using the lightest possible supports is entirely too common, and is so thoroughly reprehensible in a taxidermist that it becomes a vice.
4. Make the mechanical structure of every specimen (e.g., the fastening together of the body, limbs, head, neck, and tail), so firm that the rigidity of all is complete. It is then, and only then, in your power to place any member of the body in a desirable attitude and have it remain fixed.
5. Every portion of the skin should rest upon a firm, smooth surface of clay, excelsior, straw, or tow, according to circumstances. If there are lumps under the skin, they will appear soon after it is dry, and destroy its smoothness. If there are hollows, the result will be the same.
6. The larger the specimen the thicker is the skin, and consequently the harder and more unyielding should be the material it rests upon. Do not make a manikin with hoop iron and burlap, and a little loose filling between that and the skin, for specimens so mounted nearly always come to grief. If you stuff a skin with straw, excelsior, or tow, pack the filling in a solid mass, for with the lapse of time all such materials are bound to shrink, no matter how hard you make them at first. The shrinkage of straw is often remarkable and highly disastrous.
Attitude.—On this subject no fixed rules can be offered. To one fact, however, which should always be borne in mind by the preparator, I must call special attention, and that is as follows: Animals of all kinds, even in a state of nature, and entirely of their own volition, often assume attitudes that are highly ungraceful, unpleasing to the eye, and anything but fairly representative of the creature's form and habits. This being the case, do not make the mistake of concluding that because you have seen a particular animal assume a particular attitude, it is "natural," and therefore you can do no better than to reproduce that attitude in the specimen you are mounting. No, a thousand times no. This mistake will lead to the reproduction of many an ugly attitude, even though like life itself.
Every animal is capable of assuming scores of different attitudes, and from all these you should choose the one which is most strikingly characteristic of the subject, most truly representative, and which does the animal the same sort of justice that you seek at the hands of the artist when you go to have your own picture taken. On such occasions you do not lounge ungracefully, nor "stand stoop-shouldered," nor look listless; you stand erect, at your full height, and look your very best. Make your animal do the same.