414 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1892. 



shown iii Plate lxiii. This feature should also be compared with what 

 we see in Plate lx. 



Some excellent judges of the taxidermy of birds have spoken very 

 highly of the California partridge shown in Plate lxi, and though ap- 

 parently in all essential respects faultless in workmanship, design, and 

 execution, it is to me not as pleasing a result as the Gyrtonyx seen in 

 Plate LiXil. Birds of the latter species I have seen in New Mexico, and 

 in nature they exactly have the form here shown. The model used in this 

 case, however, was from the figure in Gould's monograph on the Odon- 

 tophorincB, while in the case of the California partridge it was from life. 



Of the larger game birds the Museum has quite a number of a char- 

 acter not to be excelled by any institution in the world, and probably 

 not fully equaled by any other in this country. They must excite even 

 the admiration of those who care ever so little for either ornithology or 

 for the feats of pure art in taxidermy. But such people, fortunately, 

 I am not now dealing with and care less for. But tell me, where is the 

 naturalist, or the sportsman, or the taxidermist, or the cultured any- 

 where who can not see the extreme beauty and excellence in such 

 specimens as I have been permitted to present in such a piece as the 

 Pheasant portrayed in Plate lxiv, or the moor cock shown in the next 

 plate following, or Plate lxv. It is too bad we can not show the color 

 in such a specimen as this, for it is surely a gorgeous fowl. There is 

 another specimen of the moor cock in the collection and the taxider- 

 mist has attempted to mount it in an attitude of strutting on a log, or 

 a large bough, I do not remember which now, for I only remember the 

 unpleasant sensation left upon me after having seen the bird itself It 

 has the appearance as though it was about to have a spasm. It is an 

 excellent example of — very bad taxidermy. 



Wolf's superb drawings form almost an inexhaustible supply of grace- 

 ful and accurate postures and positions of all kinds of vertebrates, and 

 it was from that work that the artist secured his model for the Ruffed 

 grouse reproduced in Plate lxvi. In placing this, however, before the 

 camera I gave it a front view rather than a lateral one, this being, as 

 is well known, one of the severest tests to which you can submit the 

 artist's work, especially in a piece of this kind. How well it stands it 

 others must be left to judge; for my own part and in my humble 

 opinion it represents to a line, to a feather, a startled grouse as he 

 regards from the bough of a tree the object that has alarmed him. The 

 balance, with upper wing slightly lowered, with tail flatly outspread, 

 raised ruffs, and eager look, the position of the feet — indeed the entire 

 poise is admirable throughout. 



In order to show how well some of the other species of our grouse have 

 been preserved I chose the two shown in Plate lxvii. Figs. 1, 2, either of 

 which are as good as they can be made. It would have been an easy 

 matter here to have selected a dozen or more mounted specimens of 

 grouse from the collection that would have shown how bad these birds 



