368 Kansas Academy of Science. 



to run for hours. This is a very satisfactory method of cleaning 

 and drying skins. 



Plaster of Paris is a good cleaner and drier for a skin after it has 

 been in benzine, but it is hard to work plaster out of the hair, es- 

 pecially of a dark-colored animal. To get plaster, corn-meal or 

 sawdust out of a large skin, it may be hung upon a pole in the 

 sunshine and wind and beaten thoroughly with riding-whips. A 

 piece of small rubber tubing on a handle sometimes answers the 

 purpose. This is about the only way it can be done successfully 

 unless one hns compressed air, which can be used with the very 

 best effect. If one benzine treatment does not do the business, a 

 second or even a third one may be given. 



After scraping and washing some fat polar bear skins until the 

 entire museum force had worn itself out, we spread them on the 

 floor, flesh side up, between two doors where we were accustomed 

 to do a good deal of tramping, and covered them with three or four 

 inches of sawdust. We walked over them more or less for a month, 

 and the treatment aided very much in removing the grease from 

 the skins. At that time we did not make such general use of ben- 

 zine for cleaning fat skins as we do now, and did not have a tan- 

 ner's wheel or compresse I air in the taxidermic laboratories. 



If skins of the larger mammals are to be mounted, my experience 

 has been that they had better be kept green and soft in tan-liquor 

 and never allowed to dry; and I might say farther, that the sooner 

 they are mounted after they have been cleaned and tanned the bet- 

 ter they behave themselves. When skins have been kept dry for a 

 number of years they seem to lose their life, so to speak. They 

 have very little elasticity, and it is hard to make them assume their 

 original shape on a well-formed statue. Skins that have grease in 

 them can be kept much better green and soft in tan-liquor than in 

 a dried condition. If such skins are taken out of the tan-liquor 

 and dried the grease in them soon burns them and they get rotten. 

 Skins that have been thoroughly cleaned and freed from grease can 

 be dried and put away for safe-keeping. They should be kept in 

 moth proof cases and in as cool a place as possible. The flesh side 

 of the skin may be poisoned with arsenic so that insects will not 

 eat it, but this does not always save the hair. As a rule "moths" 

 will not bother the hair of a skin that has been soaked in tan-liquor 

 and allowed to dry with a light deposit of the salt and alum on the 

 hair. We have kept skins over twenty years in the University 

 museum in this condition that were not protected by moth-proof 

 cases, and they have not been disturbed by any skin-eating insects. 



