MOUNTING MAMMAL HEADS. 163 



nearly dry. Never, save as a last resort, dry a skin in the sun, 

 and never hang one up by the nose. 



The Skull. Of course the skull must always be cleaned and 

 saved, as directed elsewhere. 



Paring down the skin, preparatory to mounting. See Chap- 

 ter xni. 



THE WORK OF MOUNTING. We will suppose that the head 

 skin has been fully cured or relaxed in the salt-and-alum bath, 

 pared down quite thin with draw-shave and knife, the holes 

 have been neatly sewn up, and the ear cartilages skinned out. 

 W T e will also suppose that the skull has been cleaned with the 

 knife in the first place, and afterward boiled and scraped to re- 

 move the last vestiges of animal matter. If the skin and skull 

 have been thus attended to, the mounted head will be clean 

 enough and free enough from all animal odors, when dry, to go 

 into my lady's boudoir, or into the dining-room of the White 

 House. 



There are almost as many different methods of mounting mam- 

 mal heads as there are taxidermists, but I shall describe only 

 my own. I have tried various other methods than that to be 

 described, but without satisfactory results, and I offer this as 

 being at once the simplest and easiest for the amateur, as well 

 as the professional worker, and above all, the one by which the 

 finest results are obtainable. The operator retains full control 

 of the shape of the specimen almost up to the last moment, 

 which I consider a sine qua nan in any method. The method 

 should be your servant, not your master. Judging from the ex- 

 tent to which this method has been adopted among the taxi- 

 dermists of this country since I first described it in a paper 

 read before the Society of American Taxidermists, in New York, 

 in 1883, it may be considered to possess some merit. 



1. We have before us the clean skull. Procure about two 

 pounds of plaster Paris, and a piece of board an inch or an inch 

 and a half thick, three or four inches wide, and about two feet 

 long. This is to be the neck standard. With the hatchet 

 round off the corners of one end. Then, with a saw and cold 

 chisel, cut a long, narrow hole in the base of the skull, so that 

 the end of the neck standard can pass through it into the lira in 

 cavity, and strike against the top of the skull (Fig. 37). Tlie 



