HOW TO MAKE A BIRD SKIN. 29 



Keep the feathers out of the wound ; cotton and the moustache movement will do it. Next you 

 must sever the tail from the body, leaving a small " pope's-nose " for the feathers to stay stuck 

 into. Put the bird in the hollow of your lightly closed left hand, tail upward, belly toward you; 

 or, if too large for this, stand it on its breast on the table in similar position. Throw your 

 left forefinger across the front of the tail, pressing a little backward ; take the scissors, cut the 

 end of the lower bowel free first, then peck away at bone and muscle with cautious snips, till 

 the tail-stump is dissevered from the rump, and the tail hangs only by skin. You will soon 

 learn to do it all at one stroke ; but you cannot be too careful at first ; you are cutting right 

 down on to the skin over the top of the pope's-nose, and if you divide this, the bird will part 

 company \nth its tail altogether. Now you have the rump-stump protruding naked ; the legs 

 dangling on either side ; the tail hanging loose over the bird's back between them. Lay down 

 scissors, take up forceps^ in your left hand; with them seize and hold the stump of the rump ; 

 and with point or handle of scalpel in the other hand, with finger-tips, or with thumb-nail 

 (best), gently press down on and peel away skin.^ No cutting will be required (usually) tiU 

 you come to the wings : the skin peels off (usually) as easily as an orange-rind ; as fast as it 

 is loosened, evert it ; that is make it continually turn itself more and more completely inside 

 out. Work thus till you are stopped by the obtruding wings. ^ You have to sever the wing 

 from the body at the shoulder, just as you did the leg at the knee, and leave it hanging by 

 skin alone. Take your scissors,* as soon as the upper arm is exposed, and cut through flesh 

 and bone alike at one stroke, a little below (outside of) the shoulder-joint. Do the same with 

 the other wing. As soon as the wings are severed the body has been skinned to the root of 

 the neck ; the process becomes very easy ; the neck almost slips out of its sheath of itself; and 

 if you have properly attended to keeping the feathers out of the wound and to continual ever- 

 sion of the skin, you now find you have a naked body connected dumb-bell-wise by a naked 

 neck to a cap of reversed skin into which the head has disappeared, from the inside of which 

 the legs and wings dangle, and around the edges of which is a row of plumage and a tail.^ 

 Here comes up an important consideration : the skin, plumage, legs, wings, and tail together 

 weigh something, — enough to stretch ^ unduly the skin of the neck, fi-om the small cylinder of 

 which they are now suspended : the whole mass must be supported. For small birds, gather 

 it in the hollow of your left hand, letting the body swing over the back of your hand out of the 



1 Or at this stage you may instead stick a hook into a firm part of the rump, and hang up the bird about 

 the level of your breast ; you thus have both hands free to work with. This is advisable with all birds too large 

 to be readily taken in hand, and will help you, at first, with any bird But there is really no use of it with a small 

 bird, and you may as well learn the best way of working at first as afterward. 



2 The idea of the whole movement is exactly like ungloving your hand from the wrist, by turning the glove 

 inside out to the very finger tips. Some people say, pull ofi" the skin ; I say never pull a bird's skin under any cir- 

 cumstances : piish it off, always operating at lines of contact of skin with body, never upon areas of skins already 

 detached. 



3 The elbows will get in your way before you reach the point of attack, namely, the shoulder, unless the 

 wings were completely relaxed (as was essential, indeed, if you measured alar expanse correctly). Think what a 

 <lifference it would make, were you skinning a man through a slit in the belly, whether his arms were stretched 

 above his head, or pinned against his ribs. It is just the same with a bird. When properly relaxed the wings 

 are readily pressed away toward the bird's head, so that the shoulders are encountered before the elbows. 



< Shears will be required to crash through a large arm-bone. Or, you may with the scalpel unjolnt the 

 shoulder. The joint will be found higher up and deeper among the breast muscles than you might suppose, 

 unless you are used to carving fowls at table. With a small bird, you may snap the bone with the thumb-nail 

 and tear asunder the muscles in an instant. 



5 You find that the little straight cut you made along the belly has somehow become a hole larger than the 

 greatest girth of the bird ; be undismayed ; it is all right. 



If you have up to this point properly pushed off the skin instead of pulling it, there is as yet probably no 

 stretching of any consequence; but, in skinning the head, which comes next, it is almost impossible for a beginner 

 to avoid stretching to an extent involving great damage to the good looks of a skin. Try your utmost, by delicacy 

 of manipulation at the lines of contact of skin with flesh, and only there, to prevent lengtlurise stretching. Cross- 

 wise aistension is of no consequence; in fact more or less of it is usually required to skin the head, and it tends 

 to counteract the ill effect of undue elongation. 



