Miscellaneous Papers. 367 



taking care and labor in trying to take good care of museum skins, 

 that it does not make much difference what is done to a skin, it 

 will not keep — even for a short time — if dried, unless the grease 

 is all worked out of it ; and to get all of the grease out of fat skins 

 is quite a serious proposition. No sure cure method can be given. 

 In practice at the University Museum about everything we ever 

 heard of other people doing, or could think of ourselves, has been 

 tried. 



As soon as skins reach our laboratory we begin to figure on how 

 to get the grease out of them. After as much of the fat and grease 

 has been removed as possible by the use of knives and scrapers, if 

 the skin is very greasy it is washed with warm soapsuds made 

 from good laundry soap and soapine. Sal soda is sometimes used. 

 After a skin has been washed by using sal soda it ought to be rinsed 

 pretty well, as sal soda seems to bleach the hair of some animals if 

 allowed to dry in it. After this washing the skins should soon be 

 returned to the tan-liquor bath to prevent the hair from slipping. 

 In two or three days the skins may again be taken from the tan- 

 liquor and hung upon poles, hair side out, to drip. 



When the hair begins to dry on the outside and is still wet next 

 to the roots, the skin is ready to be placed in a benzine bath^ 

 From one to twenty gallons may be used on a single skin, depend- 

 ing of course upon its size. Skins are usually left in benzine from 

 one to twelve hours. A fat bear skin will stand twelve hours' 

 soaking without injury if the weather is cool. If weather or room 

 is warm, half that time would be sufficient. Leaving it in too long 

 might cause the hair to slip. 



After this bath the skin should be removed to a platform that 

 will allow the benzine to drain back into the jar or tank* The 

 skin should now be squeezed and pressed so as to remove as much 

 of the benzine as possible. Then the skin, while the hair is still 

 wet with the benzi'ne, should be immediately dried in corn-meal, 

 plaster or sawdust. If the skins are small, as those of opossums or 

 civet cats, they may be dried in a tray of corn-meal or plaster by 

 covering the skins with the meal or plaster and rubbing the mate- 

 rial into the hair and shaking it out, repeating the operation many 

 times, until the skins are dry and the hair clean and fluffy. In my 

 laboratory at the University there is a large tanner's wheel, seven 

 feet in diameter and two feet wide. A bushel of meal or plaster is 

 placed in the wheel with a number of skins. The door is tiglii v^ 

 closed with bolts and the wheel started in slow motion and allowed 



* There should be no fire, gas-jet burning', or match lit anywhere near where these benzine 

 skins are being worked. 



