02 TAXIDERMY AND ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTING. 



OSDER SPHENISCI : The Penguins. The penguin of the Ant- 

 arctic seas is the king 1 of fat birds, but such magnificent mon- 

 sters as those brought horns by the Challenger, and now in the 

 British Museum, are worth a long trip to secure. Mr. Freder- 

 ick Pearcy, who collected and preserved the specimens, assured 

 me that it required two men to carry one, and that the removal 

 of the grease from the skins was a dreadful task. Of the larg- 

 est specimens, the huge legs and feet were cut off at the lower 

 end of the tibiae, and preserved in alcohol until they could bo 

 skinned and cleaned. Since it is probable that only a very few 

 of my readers will ever visit the rainy, foggy, storm-beaten and 

 God-forsaken land of the penguin, I will leave the question of 

 grease removal to the paragraph relating to the Larnellirostres. 



LONGIPENNES : The Gulls, Albatrosses, etc. The gulls, terns, 

 and petrels are so beautiful in flight that they are often mount- 

 ed with the wings fully spread, in flying attitudes. When a 

 bird is to be mounted thus, the large wing-bones must not bo 

 broken, but simply disjointed and cut loose from the body at 

 the shoulders. "When it is possible to do so, an albatross should 

 be mounted with wings outspread, to reveal to the student their 

 enormous length, and the disproportionate shortness of the 

 primaries and secondaries. If all the albatrosses in a museum 

 collection are mounted with closed wings, as they nearly always 

 are, the average observer gains not the faintest conception of 

 the form and size of the bird in motion its normal condition. 



STEGANOPODES : The Pelicans. The great white pelican is 

 one of the most satisfactory and even agreeable birds to mount 

 that could possibly fall into the hands of an able-bodied taxi- 

 dermist. If I ever adopt a shield and an assortment of devices 

 with which to cover it, one of the latter shall be a figure of a 

 huge white pelican rampant ; for it was a bird of that species 

 that gave me a start in taxidermy. It happened in this wise : 



The year before I penetrated the walls of my Alma Mater, its 

 venerable president sought to find among the students an (al- 

 leged) taxidermist, or at least the promise of one. He publicly 

 offered the princely sum of $10 to any one who could come for- 

 ward and mount a bird decently. The gauntlet thus recklessly 

 thrown down no one could pick up that year, and by the year 

 following, when I appeared upon the scene, it had grown cold. 



