134 TAXIDERMY AND ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTING. 



Cutting out Pieces of Skin. It not infrequently happens that 

 in mounting' an old skin it will be found to have been unduly 

 stretched in drying 1 , and in spite of one's best efforts there 

 will be too much skin in a flank, or behind a shoulder, or that 

 the body itself will be entirely too large. In such cases, when 

 the animal is clothed with hair which can be made to hide the 

 seams, it is necessary and permissible to cut a long slit in the 

 skin where the looseness occurs, and cut out a strip so that 

 when the edges are brought tog-ether the wrinkle no longer ex- 

 ists. Usually such cuts are made in the shape of a triangle 

 running 1 out to a very fine point, so that when the incision is 

 sewn up the entire adjacent surface will be quite smooth. 



When a taxidermist has a fresh skin, or ono which has been 

 but recently prepared dry, it is very seldom that any skin-cut- 

 ting 1 is necessary. With a good elastic skin, there are ways of 

 working 1 away from any part a superabundance of skin, or forc- 

 ing the skin on parts adjacent to the wrinkles to contract suffi- 

 ciently to cause their disappearance. 



On close-haired animals, wrinkles must be worked away, which 

 can in a majority of cases be accomplished by hard, persevering 

 work with the filler. With long-haired animals which have no 

 stripes or spots, and on which the hair can be made to hide all 

 seams, it is best to cut out triangular strips of skin. In the lat- 

 ter case it saves much time and hard labor. It certainly gives 

 a better specimen, and if such tricks leave 110 visible trace upon 

 the animal, where is the harm ? I care not if a skin be slit in 

 twenty places so long 1 as the cuts are tightly sewn up, and are 

 invisible to the eye of the observer. 



Bird skins must never be cut in this way, for to the ornitholo- 

 gist who diligently studies every specimen, the presence of 

 every feather and every bare spot naturally belonging to the 

 bird is of importance. Do not forget this caution, unless you 

 wish to call down upon your head the just wrath of the ornitho- 

 logist. Neither is it possible to do any skin-cutting upon rep- 

 tiles, for there is no natural covering to hide seams, and to cut 

 out any scales is to mutilate a specimen. 



