A NEW ART BEGUN II 
Field Museum as chief of the Department of Taxi- 
dermy. Before leaving Milwaukee I had been work- 
ing on an idea of four deer groups, to be called the 
“Four Seasons,” to show the animals in natural sur- 
roundings of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. I 
collected a good deal of the necessary material and 
put a lot of work on the project in my own shop, and 
finally reached a point where it became necessary for 
me to know whether the museum was going to want 
the groups or not. I approached the curator of 
zoology. He said that he would recommend the 
purchase of one of the four. Later I saw the presi- 
dent of the museum. After some discussion he asked 
why it was that the museum couldn’t have the four 
groups. I gave him every assurance that it could. 
I spent four years on these four groups. It wouldn’t 
take so long now but at that time we had not only 
to make the groups but also to perfect the methods 
of doing it at the same time. Four years is a long 
time to take on four deer groups, but the number of 
things in taxidermy we worked out in doing those 
groups made it a very full four years’ work. In fact, 
the method finally used for mounting those deer 
groups is the method still in use. 
Briefly, that method is this: For each animal a 
rough armature was made, on which a life-sized clay 
model was shaped just like a clay model made for 
casting in bronze except that to facilitate accuracy 
the skull and leg bones of the animal were used. This 
model was checked by measurements made of the 
dead animal in the field, by photographs, and fre- 
