400 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1892. 



the advanced student of taxidermy will no more think of employing 

 the old time-honored methods of stuffing a frog or a snake or a tortoise 

 than he would of mummifying a bird — a practice that was formerly 

 recommended, it is said, to avoid the apparent difficulty of removing the 

 skin. Of all the effigies, I think, in the forms of bad taxidermy that 

 have figured in such nightmares I have suffered from, or in my waking 

 dreams, the various stuffed snakes I have seen certainly take the palm. 

 They have been enough to frighten clean out of existence one laboring 

 under an attack of mania a potu, as well as the reptiles one claims to 

 see upon such an occasion. It is almost impossible to remove the skin 

 from any kind of an ordinary snake without disastrously disturbing its 

 delicate scales and their beautiful arrangement. And, as for the "stuf- 

 fing" of frogs, why that may be left to those lovers of the "grotesque 

 in taxidermy," for surely such feats have no place in a scientific mu- 

 seum, and it has always been a wonder to me how they ever could 

 claim even a smile from a thorough naturalist, let alone words of praise. 



My meaning in these premises will be made perfectly clear by turning 

 to Plate xxix, Fig. 12, which is from an excellent photograph of a specimen 

 of Gould's monitor (Monitor gouldi) now in the collections of the U. S. 

 National Museum.* This favored representative of the taxidermy of a 

 past decade, formed a part of the South Australian exhibit sent to the 

 Centennial Exhibition, at Philadelphia, in 1870, and subsequently, pre- 

 sented to the Institution, where it now is. To the enlightened taxider- 

 mist my saying it is a stuffed lizard would be all sufficient, but I fain 

 would invite attention to the absolutely impossible attitude it has been 

 compelled to assume. It is nailed to the base with coarse pins, whose 

 heads show on the top of every individual foot. The hind feet are 

 rammed to a bursting point — the forefeet are empty. To save length 

 of stand the tail has been forced round to the side, and the toes are 

 alternately pointing to the four quarters of the globe. We do not pass 

 favorably upon that kind of work any more, and the only interest it 

 has for me is the stage it represents in the growth and development of 

 the art of taxidermy, though it is a comfort to know that the day for 

 such ridiculous productions is rapidly passing into history. 



By whatever method done, the casting of most reptiles has one 

 great advantage over the casting of most fishes — an advantage to the 

 extent of exercising a greater. skill and knowledge on the part of the 

 operator, for it must be easy for one to realize that to make a plaster 

 mold of a flounder and a plaster mold of a frog are two very dif- 

 ferent matters. The first, beyond a spreading of tail and fins, requires 

 but little arrangement, whereas in the case of the second I have met 

 with many a person who could not for the life of him place a dead 

 frog in a natural attitude, to say nothing of making one ready and 

 obtaining a plaster mold of it. Lizards are sometimes still worse. It 

 is now, then, that we come to a point where good photographs, good 



* Catalogue No. 8896. 



