i86 SIR WILLIAM FLOWER CHAP. 



The beautiful specimens of bird-stuffing seen in the 

 series of British birds and their nests, begun under 

 Dr. Albert Giinther's auspices at the Natural His- 

 tory Museum, only drew attention to the failure to 

 obtain anything like an approach either to the truth 

 or the beauty of nature in the main galleries. It 

 is this which Flower had in mind at Newcastle 

 when he went on to say, " Here I cannot refrain 

 from saying a word on the sadly neglected art of 

 taxidermy, which continues to fill our museums with 

 wretched and repulsive caricatures of mammals and 

 birds, out of all natural proportions, shrunken here 

 and bloated there, and in attitudes absolutely im- 

 possible for the creature to have assumed when 

 alive. Happily there may be seen occasionally, 

 especially where amateurs of artistic taste and good 

 knowledge of natural history have devoted them- 

 selves to the subject, examples enough to show 

 that an animal can be converted after death, by a 

 proper application of taxidermy, into a real life-like 

 representation of the original, perfect in form, pro- 

 portions, and attitude, and almost if not quite as 

 valuable for conveying information on these points 

 as the living creature itself. The fact is, that taxi- 

 dermy is an art resembling that of the painter, or 

 rather of the sculptor. It requires natural genius 

 as well as cultivation, and it can never be per- 

 manently improved until we have abandoned the 

 present conventional low standard and low payments 

 for ' bird -stuffing,' which are utterly inadequate to 



