MUTILATION. 79 



43. MUTILATION. You will often be troubled, early in your 

 practice, with broken legs and wings, and various lacerations ; 

 but the injury must be very severe (such as the carrying away 

 of a limb, or blowing off the w r hole top of a head) that can- 

 not be in great measure remedied by care and skill. Sup- 

 pose a little bird, shot through the neck or small of the back, 

 comes apart while being skinned ; you have only to remove the 

 hinder portion, be that much or little, and go on with the rest 

 as if it were the whole. If the leg bone of a small bird be 

 broken near the heel, let it come away altogether it will 

 make little if any difference. In case of the same accident to 

 a large bird that ought to have the legs wrapped, whittle out 

 a peg and stick it in the hollow stump of the bone ; if there 

 is no stump left file a piece of stout wire to a point and stick 

 it into the heel joint. If the forearm bone that you usually 

 leave in a small bird is broken, remove it and leave the other 

 in ; if both are broken, do not clean the wings so thoroughly 

 that they become detached ; an extra pinch of arsenic will 

 condone the omission. In a large bird, if both bones of the 

 forearm are broken, splint them with a bit of wood laid in 

 between so that one end hitches at the elbow, the other at the 

 wrist. A humerus may be replaced like a leg bone, but this is 

 rarely required. If the skull be smashed, save the pieces, and 

 leave them if you can ; if not, imitate the arch of the head 

 with a firm cotton-ball. A broken tarsus is readily splinted 

 with a pin thrust up through the sole of the foot : if too large 

 for this, use a pointed piece of wire. There is no mending a 

 bill when part of it is shot away, for I think the replacing of 

 part by putty, stucco, etc., inadmissible ; but if it be only frac- 

 tured, the pieces may usually be retained in place by winding 

 with thread, or with a touch of glue or mucilage. It is singu- 

 lar, 'by the way, what unsightliness results from a very trifling 

 injury to the bill much, I suppose, as a boil on a person's 

 nose is peculiarly deplorable. I have already hinted how art- 

 fully various weak places in a skin, due to mutilation or loss 

 of plumage, may be hidden. 



