134 A BIRD COLLECTOR'S MEDLEY. 
CHAPTER SOWIE 
NOTES ON BIRD PRESERVING. 
Many are the treatises that have been written on bird-stuffing, many 
the strange representations of Nature that obedience to their instructions 
has produced, and many the internal shudders that have been experienced 
by those whom the artist has invited to admire them. 
I do not intend, therefore, to describe the whole process in detail. Full 
directions can be bought anywhere for a shilling, and any one of these hand- 
books will answer its purpose perfectly well. Myself, as one who never had 
a lesson on the subject, and owes most of his skill, such as it is, to the bitter 
teaching of experience, I only propose to jot down a few hints and suggestions 
which may perhaps save some youthful collector from the feeling of 
unspeakable vexation with which I have often gazed upon the remnants of 
those rarer birds which I was unfortunate enough to capture, and subsequently 
mangle, in the earlier days of my collection. 
To one who regards a stuffed bird from an esthetic rather than a 
scientific point of view, few sights are more intensely maddening than that 
of a rare bird badly stuffed. The plumage, indeed, may be perfect, not a 
feather missing if you will, but a stiff attitude, an unstuffed throat, a distorted 
eye, a bad cut about the shoulders, in larger birds even an unstuffed cheek— 
these are blemishes which, obtruding themselves as they do on the fastidious 
eye of the connoisseur, have ere now consigned a “perfect specimen” to 
the dustbin, and, in my opinion, rightly too. One is almost inclined at times, 
after beholding some well-devilled effigy, to join the ranks of those who 
insist on keeping their birds as skins rather than subject them to the un- 
certain vicissitudes of the process so aptly designated ‘setting up.” 
Perhaps the most annoying fact connected with bird-stuffing is that the 
mistakes which spoil stuffed birds are such small ones, so easily avoided if 
one only gives time and care to the work. I have sat by and watched a good 
man ruin a bird simply because he would stroke the neck so lovingly 
while he had it turned inside out. My own belief is that any person possessed 
of moderately artistic tastes and perseverance can, if he will, become a 
