Miscellaneous Papers. 363 



ON THE CARE OF MAMMAL SKINS KEPT FOR MUSEUM 



PURPOSES. 



By L. L. Dyche, University of Kansas, Lawrence. 



npHIS paper is in part an answer to, or at least was suggested by^ 

 -^ numerous inquiries, by letter and otherwise, concerning the 

 proper methods of caring for ihe larger mammal skins for museum 

 'purposes. The writer has been handling mammal skins in one 

 form or another since he was a boy, and has been trying to tan, 

 cure and preserve them for more than forty years. 



When a boy I tanned skins by rubbing salt and alum on them 

 and then folding and rolling them up so that the two halves of the 

 fleshy part of the skin would stick together. After a week or ten 

 days the skins were opened up; the flesh and fat being scraped off, 

 they were rubbed until they were soft and dry. It took more or 

 less hard work but the results were not bad. It so happens that I 

 ^still have an opossum skin that was tanned nearly forty years ago. 

 It was made into a little rug and has seen considerable service on 

 the backs of chairs, and yet it is in better condition now than some 

 skins that I have handled in more recent years by some newer and 

 supposedly better methods. A squirrel skin that was tanned about 

 the same time is in much better shape than the opossum. The 

 squirrel skin did not have any grease in it. The opossum skin 

 evidently had some grease left in it, though it did not show at the 

 time it was tanned. The subject of grease in skins will be consid- 

 ered later on in this paper. 



I want to say, before going any farther, that it is very important 

 that a skin should reach the museum in good condition. It seldom 

 happens that a skin is in good shape that has been taken from the 

 body of an animal that has died from some kind of disease. The 

 hair on such a specimen will usually slip in places while the skin 

 is being dressed and tanned. An animal that has begun to decom- 

 pose — even though slightly — before the skin is removed, usually 

 furnishes a doubtful skin. 



The good skins that come into a museum are those that have 

 been taken from animals that have been shot or trapped and cared 

 for by experienced collectors; and I might say farther that these 

 are about the only first-class skins that ev.er do reach a museum. 

 Many skins are sent in by inexperienced persons who are more or 

 less interested in specimens for museum purposes. Such skins 

 reach the museum in every conceivable condition. As a rule they 



