374 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1892. 



platform of one of the most important and exact of all the sciences. 

 I refer to the paragraph in which he has said: 



Although considerable advances have been made of late years in the art of taxi- 

 dermy, it is still tar from perfection. This is to be attributed, in a great measure, 

 to the education of the persons who practice this art; for among all I have met 

 with employed in the preservation of animals, none have had the advantage of 

 anatomical study, which is quite indispensable to the perfection of stuffing. One or 

 two individuals, it is true, have attended to the structure of the skeleton of man 

 and a few of the more common animals, but this is far from the information which 

 they ought to possess; for nothing short of a general and extensive knowledge of 

 comparative anatomy can qualify them sufficiently for an art which is so compre- 

 hensive and varied in its application (pp. 2, 3). 



Prophetic words, indeed, and not in a few quarters has the prophecy 

 of this distinguished authority been largely fulfilled. More light, how- 

 ever, is needed in other places, and in many of our museums of the 

 very highest standing the examples of taxidermy they offer us are 

 far, very far from our ideal of what they should be. 



Charles Waterton is another worthy name that must not be forgotten 

 here, and fully seventy years ago, in his Wanderings in South America, 

 he wrote, in his quaint and impressive old style, yet pregnant with 

 truth : 



Were you to pay as much attention to birds as the sculptor does to the human frame, 

 you would immediately see on entering a museum that the specimens are not well 

 done. This remark will not be thought severe, when yon reflect that that which 

 was once alive has probably been stretched, stuffed, stiffened, and wired by the 

 hand of a common clown. Consider, likewise, how the plumage must have been 

 disordered by too much stretching or drying, and, perhaps, sullied, or at least 

 deranged, by the pressure of a coarse and heavy hand— plumage which, ere life had 

 fled within it, was accustomed to he touched by nothing rougher than the dew of 

 heaven and the pure and gentle breath of air. 



These are potent words as coming from the pen of a man who wrote 

 them within a year or two of three-quarters of a century ago. Espe- 

 cially is this the case when that ingenious naturalist in the same work 

 enjoins that — 



If you wish to be in ornithology what Angelo was in sculpture, you must apply to 

 profound study and your own genius to assist you. 



You must have a complete knowledge of ornithological anatomy. You must pay 

 close attention to the form and attitude of the bird, and know exactly the propor- 

 tion each curve, or extension, or contraction, or expansion of any particular part 

 bears to the rest of the body. In a word you must possess Promethean boldness, 

 and bring down tire and animation, as it were, into your preserved specimen. 



"Repair to the haunts of birds on plains and mountains, forests, 

 swamps, and lakes, and give up your time to examine the economy of 

 the different orders of birds, " is also the kind of study Waterton 

 recommended in L825 to those who desired to preserve birds in their 

 strictly natural attitudes as they assumed them in life and in nature. 



Standing almost alone as he did as a sound instructor of the tax- 

 idermic art in the fust quarter of the present century, he is represented 



