CHAPTER XIII. 

 PRELIMINARY WORK IX MOUNTING MAMMALS. 



RELAXING DKY SKINS. Nearly all mammal skins that go from 

 one country to another are sent in a dry state, and it is a rare 

 exception to obtain a foreign skin in any other condition. It 

 therefore behooves the mammal taxidermist to become a thor- 

 ough expert in softening 1 dry skins of all kinds and sizes, and 

 bringing them into mountable condition. 



To relax a dry skin, rip it open, remove the filling material, 

 and immerse it in a weak but clean salt-and-alum bath (see 

 Chapter IV.) until it becomes soft, bo the time required three 

 days or three weeks. If you are in a great hurry, soak the skin 

 at first for a brief period in clear water, and if it is milk-warm, 

 so much the better. Sometimes a skin is so old and hard and 

 refractory that the bath of salt and alum seems to make no im- 

 pression upon it, in which case try clear water. In a few hours 

 it will yield and collapse, and then it must be put into the 

 bath, or the water will soon macerate it, and cause the hair to 

 slip off. You can leave the skin in the salt-and-alum bath as 

 long as you choose without endangering it in any way. 



The inside of every dry skin usually has over it a hard, in- 

 elastic coating which, when once gotten rid of by shaving Gi- 

 st-raping, leaves the skin underneath measurably soft and elas- 

 tic, according to its kind. If the skin is a small one, or no 

 larger than that of a wolf, the best way to get it in working 

 order is to lay it flat upon the table, and go at it vigorously 

 with the skin-scraper (see Fig. 24). In this there must be no 

 half-way measures, no modesty, no shirking. Bear on hard, 

 dig away at the same spot with all your energy, first in one di- 

 rection, then crosswise, then diagonally. Scrape as if you were 

 scraping on a wager, and presently the skin will become so 



