SCIENTIFIC TAXIDERMY FOR MUSEUMS. 411 



partment is growing up at the Government museums, and this in the 

 field we now have under consideration, and it is the exhibition of the 

 finest possible specimens of all our domesticated fowls, especially 

 pigeons, chickens, and the like. So far as the art has applied itself to 

 the preservation and representation of these lately, it lias been most 

 satisfactory, and many masterpieces of this kind now adorn the scries. 



The style in which the fowls are being done is well exemplified in 

 Plates xlvi and xlvii. Mr. 0. A. Sharp, of Lockport, N. V.. imported 

 the birds there shown from England. They are both prize-winners, and 

 both splendid samples of Indian game fowl, cock and hen. At their 

 death they were presented by Mr. Sharp to the National Museum. 

 "Lady Whitfield," the hen, is an hundred-dollar bird, while her consort 

 brought $350. From an artistic point of view, in so far as taxidermy 

 is concerned, they are markedly superior pieces of workmanship and 

 in every particular — pose, topographical anatomy, coloring, spirit, and 

 all. To appreciate their beauty, we have but to compare them with 

 some of the taxidermy that was done during the old regime of the 

 Museum's history. I mean such types of it as I am enabled to show in 

 Plate xlix, Fig. 2 — a- White-faced black Spanish cock — a relic I ex- 

 humed from the vaults of the specimens now being discarded. What a 

 beauty ( ?) — saddle-backed, tail thrown up like a toucan's, wires show- 

 ing everywhere, most all of his body in front of his legs, stepping off 

 with both feet flat on the ground, and such a weird, grotesque, con- 

 sequential, lop-sided aspect anyway — this fright with no form of a fowl 

 known to me is only fit to grace the front window of a fourth-class cheap 

 bird u stutter's" shop. A few more such " spooks" as this still linger on 

 exhibition, as if by courtesy to the past, but they will shortly have to 

 make way before the work now coming in. 



Sometimes these game cocks are "undubbed," that is their wattles 

 and comb are not trimmed oft*. In preserving these parts in a bird like 

 this they are cast from the original and restored in a plastic material, 

 that will keep indefinitely without change of form or color. After the 

 bird is mounted, these are properly attached in their places on the 

 head, and the suture lines colored over. The effect is absolutely per- 

 fect, and to show how perfect it is I have introduced two additional 

 figures, nearly life size, of the head of a game cock (Plate xlviii, Figs. 

 1, 2). They will bear the minutest inspection from every critical point 

 known to taxidermists. In Fig. 2 the eye is unfortunately marred by 

 the light refraction, but we can not avoid that in photography. Thor- 

 oughly lifelike again is the pretty specimen shown in Plate L, a Silver- 

 spangled Hamburg hen. The artist who mounted this specimen is 

 a close student at all times of the various attitudes assumed not only 

 by fowls and pigeons of all kinds, but of the feathered creation at 

 large, and in tbis instance has happily hit the appearance of a hen 

 feeding as she walks along or regarding some small object on the 

 ground that has attracted her attention. 



