SOME NEW BOOKS. 



The Art of Stuffing. 



Scientific Taxidermy for Museums (based on a study of the United States 

 Government collections). By R. W. Shufeldt, M.D. Smithsonian Institution. 

 Report of the U.S. National Museum for 1892, pp. 369-436, pis. xv.-xcvi. 

 Washington, 1894. 



It was the Rev. J. G. Wood who once said that his earliest attempt 

 at stuffing an animal was made upon a mouse. After skinning the 

 creature, he cut off so many inches of his school ruler as would fill up the 

 interior, and stitching together the margins of the skin under the belly, 

 found a satisfaction in contemplating the success of his creation. The 

 old days of monstrosities are rapidly fading away in all the larger 

 institutions, and especially in our own British Museum of Natural 

 History. No longer do we there see those highly polished cattle in 

 whose sides, rumour has it, it was quite possible to get enough 

 reflection to arrange one's hair ; and we may even discount the state- 

 ment of certain evilly-disposed persons who affirm that within recent 

 years there was to be seen one animal in the British Gallery whose 

 flanks had been repaired by a process of skin grafting of a somewhat 

 unsuccessful nature. The very beautiful examples of individual 

 stuffed animals, or groups of animals, which are fast displacing their old 

 and worn representatives in our National Museum are too well-known 

 to need recalling here, and Dr. Shufeldt refers to them as " Perhaps 

 some of the finest groups in the world." Two of the best of these 

 groups (of birds) Dr. Shufeldt has been able to reproduce through the 

 courtesy of Dr. Bowdler Sharpe, and in doing so he pays a high 

 compliment to " that distinguished ornithologist's " interesting paper 

 on these stuffed groups which appeared in the English Illustrated 

 Magazine for December, 1887. 



In an exceedingly interesting sketch of the history of taxidermic 

 art, prefixed to the paper, Dr. Shufeldt reminds us of Hanno's 

 discovery of the gorilla five centuries before Christ. These were 

 flayed, and the skins taken to Carthage, where they were preserved 

 for many generations, and described by Pliny as Gorgones. He also 

 refers to the robes of the Mexican kings, with their gorgeous 

 ornamentations of trogon and other brilliantly plumaged birds ; 

 quotes Shakespeare's apothecary, within whose 



Needy shop a tortoise hung, 



An alligator stuffed, and other skins 



Of ill-shaped fishes, 



and finally tells us that the earliest stuffed specimen, as opposed to a 

 mere skin, now known to exist, is a rhinoceros still preserved in the 

 Royal Museum of Vertebrates in Florence, and dating from the 

 sixteenth century. 



Dr. Shufeldt next discusses the methods employed by the best 

 taxidermists of the century, and points out the advantages of a liberal 

 education and the importance of a first-rate knowledge of general 



