SHROPSHIRE NATURALISTS. 2$ 



many, but his intense love of the work carried him on to 

 success, and he ultimately became so skilful that he was 

 able to relinquish his original trade and take to taxider- 

 my as a profession. It is mainly to him that we are 

 indebted for the complete revolution wrought about this 

 time in the method of mounting Birds. The old method 

 was to set Birds up all alike on stiff wooden perches with 

 a label bearing the name and other particulars. Mr. 

 Franklin made his cases real works of art. He studied 

 the habits of the various species and imitated their 

 attitudes to perfection, while the accessories were 

 always in keeping with the natural habitat of the Bird. 

 As an instance we need only refer to the life-like 

 appearance of the pair of Ospreys pourtrayed in the 

 frontispiece to this volume. His best claim to fame 

 rests, however, upon his invention of an entirely new 

 method of making artificial rockwork on which to place 

 his Birds. The old plan was to make a foundation of 

 wood, cover it with paper or canvas, coat this with 

 glue, and then while still wet sprinkle it over with 

 sand ; the result was quite unlike anything in nature ! 

 Mr. Franklin sought to improve on this, and, after many 

 experiments, finally decided on peat as the basis of his 

 rock-work, coating it with paint which his innate sense 

 of colour enabled him to use with most artistic and 

 natural effects : this plan with various modifications 

 has since become general, though probably few of the 

 men who afterwards adopted his method had any idea 

 who invented it, for the originator was of a most quiet 

 and unassuming disposition, and shrank from publicity 

 in any shape. He died in 1885 after a lingering and 

 painful illness, and, to the last, retained his intense 

 love of animated nature. 



