l8o NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



hand ! Subjects thus treated may be placed on 

 the floor of the casting-room and a box built up 

 around them; a plaster mould being then made in 

 two halves is set aside for some time to dry, and then 

 carefully and repeatedly oiled and greased inside. 

 The actual model is afterwards made by pasting 

 many thicknesses of paper inside the mould; having 

 gradually dried for several weeks it is then ready for 

 strengthening by the addition of a wooden skeleton 

 to its inside. Last of all come the finishing touches — ■ 

 the rounding off of superfluities with knife or file, 

 the colouring with oil paints, and the mounting of the 

 completed facsimile in the museum gallery. In 

 many instances half models only are executed, the 

 actual skeleton of the animal being displayed on the 

 inner side ao-ainst a black lining. 



o o 



An extraordinary specimen is preserved in the 

 museum of the Royal College of Surgeons (No. 2935A 

 in the Pathological Series), being the articulated 

 skeleton of a beluga taken near Dunrobin Castle, and 

 presented to the collection in 1879. On examining 

 the neck vertebrae, the atlas, or first vertebra, is seen 

 to have been dislocated during life from the occipital 

 condyles, with subsequent bony union ! This example 

 is probably unique in the annals of pathology. Broken 

 hearts are said to be capable of repair, but broken 

 necks are usually considered to be beyond mending. 



One may here mention that curious belief of the 

 Greenlanders — that the beluga is the female of the 



