TAXIDERMY AND ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTING. 



PART I. COLLECTING AND PRESERVING. 



Eternal vigilance is the price of a collection. 



CHAPTER L 

 THE WORKER AND THE WORK TO BE DONE. 



THE need of thoroughly skilled collectors is increasing every 

 hour ; and right here let me say to the young naturalist athirst 

 for travel and adventure, There is no other way in which you can 

 so easily find a way to gratify your heart's desire as by becom- 

 ing a skilful collector. 



The most important vertebrate forms are being rapidly swept 

 off the face of the earth by firearms, traps, and other engines of 

 destruction. In five years' time perhaps in three there will 

 not be a wild buffalo left in this country outside of protected 

 limits. There are less than one hundred even now and yet 

 how very few of our museums have good specimens of this most 

 interesting and conspicuous native species. 



The rhytina, the Californian elephant seal, the great auk, and 

 the Labrador duck have already been exterminated. For many 

 years the West Indian seal was regarded as wholly extinct, but 

 a small colony has lately been discovered by Mr. Henry L. 

 \Vard on a remote islet in the Gulf of Mexico. The walrus, the 

 manatee, the moose, mountain goat, antelope, mountain sheep, 

 the sea otter, the beaver, elk, and mule deer are all going fast, 

 and by the time the museum-builders of the world awake to the 

 necessity of securing good specimens of all these it may be too 

 late to find them. 



