28 TAXIDERMY AND ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTING. 



when you come to the ears, cut them off close down to the 

 head. Turn the skin wrong 1 side out over the head, until you 

 come to the eyes. Now be careful or you will do mischief. 

 Work slowly with the knife, keeping 1 close to the edge of the 

 bony orbit, until you see, through a thin membrane under your 

 knife edge, the dark portion of the eyeball iris and pupil. 

 You may now cut fearlessly through this membrane and expose 

 the eye. If your work has been properly done, you have not 

 cut the eyelids anywhere. If you are ever in doubt when 

 operating on the eye, thrust the tip of one finger fairly into the 

 eye and against the ball, from without, and cut against it. 

 This is always an excellent plan in skinning large mammals. 



Skin down to the end of the nose, cut through the cartilage 

 close to the bone, and cut on down to where the upper lip joins 

 the gum. Cut both lips away from the skull, close to the bone, 

 all the way around the mouth. The lips are thick and fleshy, 

 and must be split open from the inside and flattened out so 

 that the flesh in them can be pared off. Do not mutilate the 

 lips by cutting- them away at the edge of the hair, but 

 leave the inside skin, so that in mounting 1 you can fold 

 it in (with a little clay replacing 1 the flesh) and thus make 

 a mouth anatomically correct. Do not shave off the roots 

 of the whiskers, or they will fall out. Gash the flesh between 

 them (they are set in rows), but leave the follicles themselves 

 untouched. Pare away the membrane which adheres to the 



inside of the eyelids, and turn the ear 

 wrong 1 side out at the base, in order to 

 cut away the flesh around it. If the ears 

 have hair upon them, they must be 

 skinned up from the inside and turned 

 FIG. s.-skinning a squirrel's wrong side out quite to the tip, in order 



to separate the outside skin, which holds 

 the hair, from the cartilage which supports the ear. 



For a full description of ear skinning, see another chapter. 

 The great principle which is the foundation of all valuable 

 field work on mammal skins is this : A skin must be so taken off, 

 cleaned of flesli, and preserved that the preservative powder or fluid 

 can act directly upon the roots of the hair from the inner side of the 

 shin, and over every portion of its surface. Neither alum, nor salt, 



