272 TAXIDERMY AND ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTING. 



in development, do not properly represent a species, and arc 

 seldom valuable except for comparison with other specimens of 

 the same species. Very often a fine adult specimen has its skin 

 so badly torn by shot or bullets, or the skin covering is in such 

 a bad state of shedding-, moulting 1 , and the like, that the skin is 

 totally unfit for preservation. In such a case the preservation 

 of a fine perfect skeleton becomes a clear gain of one specimen 

 to the collector and to science. 



A perfect skeleton is one in which not a bone is missing-, and 

 in which no substitutions have been made. But it is by no 

 means always possible to secure a wild animal without breaking- 

 some portion of its osteological anatomy. When a bone is bro- 

 ken, the best thing- to do is to supply it with a corresponding- 

 bone from an animal of similar size and age. Sometimes the 

 closet naturalist, who g-enerally thinks that rare wild animals 

 are gathered like berries, will grumble because a broken bone 

 has thus been replaced, and find fault with the size of the sub- 

 stitute, but that need not trouble the collector's conscience in 

 the least. I once shot a fine prong-horn antelope buck, skeleton- 

 ized it carefully, cut up the skeleton, and carried the whole of it 

 for three days attached to my saddle, while I rode a very restive 

 and dangerous horse, and also carried two blankets and a May- 

 nard rifle. That skeleton, thus earned, had some broken bones 

 supplied from another specimen. It finally w T ent to Europe, 

 and fell into the hands of a closet naturalist, who blithely found 

 fault with the collector because of the supplied bones. Again, 

 when I once risked drowning- in order to enter a cave on a dan- 

 gerous sea-coast to collect g-uacharo birds, and got a goodly 

 number, a German closet naturalist complained bitterly because 

 a skin that was sent to him had two missing tail-feathers sup- 

 plied by two other feathers that were a trifle smaller than the 

 missing ones. 



But I did once perform a feat in South America which filled 

 the souls of my friends at Ward's with wonder, and even admi- 

 ration. In collecting about half a dozen skeletons of capybara, 

 each of which I took care should be absolutely perfect, by some 

 brilliant manoeuvre I contrived to send home to the establish- 

 ment one skeleton which was the happy possessor of two left 

 forelegs and two left hind legs, but never a right one ; and in 



