To prepare a tiger's tongue, for example, first preserve the whole tongue in alcohol, for safe keeping. When ready to proceed, slit it open lengthwise underneath, and skin it carefully. Take a piece of sheet lead, cut it and hammer it into the right size and shape, and fit it in the mouth as nearly as possible in the shape the finished tongue is to have. By judicious hammering with the round end of a machinist's hammer you can give it any shape you desire. When it is just right, cover it with clay to replace the flesh of the tongue, treat the skin with arsenical soap, put it over, and sew it up. Now fit the tongue into the mouth, and by pressure with the fingers change its shape wherever necessary in order to make it fit exactly as you wish to have it. When finished, lay it aside to dry. The accompanying figures were drawn from the finished tongue of the tiger represented in Plate I., where it is seen in place.
[a]Fig. 45.]—Side View of Tiger's Tongue.
When the tongue is dry it must be painted with oil colors, using a little turpentine so that the surface shall not be too glossy, nor have a varnished look. Vermilion and white are the best colors to use, and above all do not make the tongue or lips look like pink candy, or red flannel, or red sealing-wax. Call up the household cat at an early stage of the proceedings, and use her mouth as a model, whether she will or no. A patient old tabby is an invaluable ally in the mounting of feline animals of all sorts, and Towser will also help you out with your Canidæ. When modeling the mouth or muscles of a gorilla or orang utan, catch the first amateur taxidermist you can lay your hands on—the wilder and greener the better—and use him as your model. Study him, for he is fearfully and wonderfully made. The way some of my good-natured colleagues used to pose for me as (partly) nude models at Ward's, when I once had a ten-months' siege with orangs, gorillas, and chimpanzees, was a constant source of wonder and delight to the ribald crew of osteologists who knew nothing of high art.
[a]Fig. 46.]—End View.
Fortunately the tongues of most large mammals are smooth, and are easily reproduced by using the same leaden core as described above, and covering it first with papier-maché, drying it, and coating with tinted wax, laid on hot with a small flat paint-brush called a "fitch." With small specimens it is not necessary to make the tongue as a separate piece, or put a leaden core in it. Fill into the mouth a sufficient quantity of papier-maché, pack it down, and then proceed to model the surface of it into a tongue, shaped to suit the subject. Such a tongue is, of course, a fixture in the mouth.
Cleaning Teeth.—Before finishing a mouth with wax, the teeth must be washed clean with a stiff brush. If they will not come out white enough to suit you, wash them with a solution of two parts muriatic acid and one part water, applied with a tooth-brush if possible. Let it stay on the teeth about a quarter of a minute, when it must be washed off with an abundance of clear water. If the acid stays on too long, it will destroy the entire outer surface (enamel) of the teeth.
Waxing a Mouth.—Of course it will answer, and sometimes quite well enough, perhaps, when a mouth has been handsomely and smoothly modeled in fine papier-maché, to sand-paper it and paint it over when dry with two or three coats of oil color. You can hardly do otherwise, in fact, when you are not prepared to work with wax. But the really fine way, however, is to coat your dry papier-maché with tinted wax as follows:
Procure from the nearest dealer in artists' materials some cakes of white wax. You must also have a small oil or gas stove, or a spirit-lamp, and rig above it a wire frame on which you can set your wax cup. The wax cups should be small, and made of pressed tin, so that they contain no soldered joints. The wax is to be applied hot, or at least quite warm, for bear in mind that if you heat your wax too hot it changes its color quite perceptibly, and makes it dark and yellow. Wax should always be clear and transparent, and when the excess of heat turns it yellow, throw it away.