36 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1921. 



the bird skin take the form which he had mentally determined to be 

 the natural and best position. While at Ward's establishment he made 

 advances in the methods, but it was not until he had been in the 

 National Museum for some time that he was at his best. His work 

 on dry skins and dismounting and remounting old birds was per- 

 fected here. 



Mr. Wood came to the Museum in 1888, and at first was employed 

 to assist Mr. William T, Hornaday in taking care of the live animals 

 in the shed adjoining the Smithsonian Building — the beginning of 

 the National Zoological Park collections. After a little time he began 

 to mount birds for the Chicago Exposition, and his work won the 

 approval of Mr. Robert Ridgway, and when there was a vacancy in 

 bird taxidermy he was placed there and continued in this work until 

 his death. 



In years to come, as now, Mr. Wood will be known by his fine work 

 displayed in the mounted bird collection on exhibition in this Museum. 

 The hawks and owls, parrots, and game birds, the greater number 

 remounted by him, show the quality of his work and point to the 

 loss which the Museum has sustained in his death. 



William Palmer, for many years a valued member of the Museum 

 force, died in New York City on April 8, 1921. He was born at 

 Penge, England, August 1, 1856, and came to this country with 

 his father, the late Joseph Palmer, in 1868. The elder Palmer 

 became connected with the Museum in 1873 as its preparator, and 

 was particularly skillful in all matters pertaining to modeling, 

 casting, the coloring of reproductions, and taxidermy. William 

 Palmer, under the tutelage of his father, became, in time, equally 

 adept in these subjects. He joined the Museiun force in 1874 as 

 an assistant to his father. In 1883 he was sent to New Haven, 

 Conn., to prepare the large models of the giant squid and octopus 

 exhibited at the Great International Fisheries Exhibition in London, 

 and later transferred here, where they, and many other examples of 

 his art, still remain. With Messrs, Lucas and ScoUick, of the 

 Museum force, he went to Newfoundland, in the spring of 1903, and 

 took part in the preparation of a mold and skeleton of a 78-foot 

 sulphur-bottom whale. A year later he accompanied Dr. G. P. 

 Merrill to the State of Sinaloa, Mexico, for the purpose of making a 

 mold of the great Bacubarito meteorite. 



Mr. Palmer was an excellent general naturalist, and was par- 

 ticularly well versed in the local fauna and flora, in which he had 

 specialized for many years. He began a collection of birds in 

 the spring of 1874, which in time became a very important one, 

 and contained many local rarities and records, some of which are 

 still unique. In the course of his ornithological work he had the 



