SCIENTIFIC TAXIDERMY FOR MUSEUMS. 419 



is climbing up the trunk of the tree. A fourth specimen, which has been disturbed 

 by another, is pausing to protest with widely opened mouth, while in the act <>l 

 creeping- into the mouth of the burrow . 



Please notice the number of facts that air taught by this simple little group, It- 

 shows that the opossum is a marsupial, and the female carries her young in a pouch 

 in her own body; that when the yonnt;' reach a certain age they ride upon the 

 mother's back, clinging to her fur; that the animal is arboreal inhabit and has ;i 

 prehensile tail, by which it is capable of suspending itself; that it burrows in hanks 

 in dry situations, and sleeps curled up like a hall in a bed of dry leaves. It also 

 shows the full size of the adult, the young of the previous year, and the recent 

 brood. But for an unfortunate accident, which has yet to be repaired, it would 

 also show the number born at one birth. Of course in this group the grass and moss 

 are properly represented, and there are artificial leaves on the tree branches which 

 enter the group (pp. 240, 241). 



Very truly Mr. Hornaday further remarks in the succeeding para- 

 graph: 



Groups of this class can easily be made to show the ordinary nesting and breeding 

 habits of the animals represented. Now it happens that animals of some species 

 make a variety of nests, according to circumstances or caprice. In 1889 we prepared 

 a group in three sectious, each of which shows one of the habits of the gray squirrel 

 in nesting. Each is composed of au actual nest, and in the identical tree in which 

 it Avas built by Bunny himself. One represents a nest in a hollow beech tree, iu 

 which a pair of gray squirrels bred for years. Another is what might he called a 

 summer nest, made of cedar bark, iu the top of a cedar tree. The third section 

 represents an outside nest of green oak leaves, placed on a branch of an oak tree. 

 These three groups are exhibited in one case, but while each is separated from the 

 others by a plate of heavy tinted glass, it is made apparent that they all illustrate 

 the habits of the same animal. The specimens composing the three groups were all 

 collected within a radius of 10 miles of the city of Washington. Besides teaching 

 what the nesting habits of the gray squirrel are, it also impresses upon the observer 

 the very important fact that the habits of different individuals of a given species 

 are capable of wide variation.* They show how dangerous it is for a student or 

 scientific investigator to generalize too freely from one or two facts, aud that it is 

 dangerous for anyone to say what an animal will not do (p. 242). 



Another scientifically mounted marsupial in the collection is seen in 

 the single specimen of the great Bock Kangaroo (Macropus robustus) 

 (Plate lxxtv). This piece of work was done by Mr. Jenness Richardson, 

 then holding the position of taxidermist of the American Museum of Nat- 

 ural Historyof New York City, N. Y., where he produced some avian and 

 mammalian groups quite worthy of his distinguished instructor, the 

 artist from whom I have just been quoting. This large and thoroughly 

 life-like specimen, place din an attitude so natural to it, and with every 

 structural detail so perfectly preserved, is decidedly the best kangaroo 

 in the museum, and being so good, it has the effect of still further 

 depreciating- the specimens of bad taxidermy of animals of the same 



And what is quite as important, the species, as it occupies a very limited geo- 

 graphical area. Had the place where these squirrels were collected been in an 

 unknown locality, and recently explored, one naturalist might have come away 

 with specimens and one set of notes on breeding habits, and another, and a third, 

 come away with different accounts, none of the three of which would have agreed 

 in this particular. 



