MUSEUMS. 539 



working-iron betwixt it and the bone, and then modelling the skin 

 with the working-iron. 



The wattles of fowls, the caruncles of turkeys, and the combs of 

 cocks, by the simple process of internal modelling, may be made to 

 retain their natural size. 



I have now given an outline of the mode of preserving quadrupeds 

 upon scientific principles. Here, then, I stop ; for I can go on no 

 further. I can no more explain, by the agency of my pen, how to 

 make the thousand and one little touches which are necessary to 

 ensure success, than a fiddler can convey instructions by letter to 

 one who has never used the bow. He may tell him, forsooth, to 

 draw the horse-hair at right angles over the catgut ; and he may add 

 directions how the learner is to stop and shift, and stop and shift 

 again, until he shall produce delightful music. But this will avail 

 him nothing. The lad will scrape and scrape again, for want of 

 personal instructions, till at last the man who is doomed to be 

 punished by his grating will cry out 



" Old Orpheus play'd so well, he moved Old Nick ; 

 But thou movest nothing but thy fiddle-stick." 



I have turned this new discovery ten thousand times over in my 

 mind, and I invariably come to the same conclusion : viz., that I 

 cannot give sufficient instruction by means of the pen alone. I am 

 placed in a situation somewhat like that of the French cook, who 

 was ordered by his king to make a dish out of that which put his 

 culinary powers utterly at defiance. " I have turned it every way, 

 an't please your Majesty," said he ; " and I have tried it with every 

 kind of sauce ; but, positively, I cannot make a dish of it." Neither 

 can I effect, through the medium of the pen, that which I could wish 

 to do in this case. Wherefore, I beg to inform the reader that 

 it requires the dissecting hand of the instructor, and from two to 

 three weeks of actual work upon a specimen, to render the novice 

 an adept in this new mode of preserving quadrupeds for cabinets of 

 natural history. But, as I have neither leisure nor inclination to 

 assemble pupils around me, I must request him who approves of the 

 plan to be satisfied with the outline which I have just given him. I 



