A NEW ART BEGUN 17 
Jined cases into the forests after elephants. I tried 
building thatched roofs over the skins but it was not 
a success. I speculated on many other plans but 
none appeared feasible. Finally Nature provided a 
solution for the difficulty. 
There are, in the elephant country, many great 
swarms of bees. I set the natives to work collecting 
beeswax which is as impervious to moisture as shellac. 
I melted the wax and used it to coat unbleached cot- 
ton cloth, known in East Africa as Americana. In 
this water-tight, wax-covered cloth I wrapped my 
dried and salted rolls of skins and packed them on 
the porters’ heads down to the railroad. 
As a matter of fact, field conditions make it so 
difficult to care for skins properly that only a very 
small percentage ever reach a taxidermy shop in 
perfect condition. 
Similarly the measurement of animals for taxi- 
dermy presents many difficulties. The size of a lion’s 
leg, for instance, measured as it hangs limp after the 
animal’s death is not accurate data for the leg with 
the muscles taut ready for action. Nor is an animal’s 
body the same size with its lungs deflated in death 
as when the breath of life was in its body. All these 
things must be taken into account in using measure- 
ments or even casts to resurrect an animal true to its 
living appearance. 
My work on the deer groups impressed me with the 
fact that taxidermy, if it was to be an art, must have 
skilled assistance as the other arts have. I began to 
dream of museums which would have artist-naturalists 
