HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. V 



work, are not the best by any means, while those for mounting rep- 

 tiles, fishes and crustaceans are far better than some of the methods 

 employed at the present day. This book is beautifully bound in 

 the old style vellum. Another French work, by P. N. Nicholas, 

 published at Paris in 1801, gives practical methods of mounting quad- 

 rupeds and reptiles, but the one given for mounting birds is the old 

 unskillful, soft-filling method. The bird skin is also treated quite 

 differently. It is soaked in a bath of preserving solution which, if at 

 all practicable, would certainly aid in its preservation. 



In 1786 the Abbe Manesse published a volume under the title of 

 "Treatise on the Manner of Stuffing and Preserving Animals and 

 Skins." He presented his work to the Academy of Sciences at Paris. 

 It contained some very useful advice in the mounting of birds, but the 

 excluding of poisons and the adopting of alkalies for the preservation 

 of skins proved a failure in his day and is not admissible in modern 

 taxidermy. 



About this time an old German sculptor living at Lahaye devoted 

 himself to the practice of taxidermy, and in a short time surpassed all 

 those who had employed themselves in the mounting of animals. 

 He excelled in the mounting of large mammals. 



Becceur, of Metz, who first compounded the well-known preserva- 

 tive, arsenical soap, mounted birds and quadrupeds by replacing their 

 skeleton back in their skins. The muscles being removed from the 

 bones, which were allowed to remain attached to their ligaments, he 

 replaced the flesh with flax or cotton, wired the legs and vertebral col- 

 umn, sewed up the opening in the skin, placed the specimen on its 

 stand, gave it a suitable position and then put on the finishing touches. It 

 is recorded that his work was skillfully done and the attitudes of his sub- 

 jects were natural, because with the skeleton he could not go far wrong. 



A German work, issued anonymously at Leipsic in 1788, contains 

 some rather unusual methods of mounting birds and mammals. 

 Professor J. S. Wiley in 1855 published a fifty page pamphlet, entitled 

 " The Preparation and Preservation of Objects of Natural History." 

 It is one of the best and most thorough treatises on the subject that 

 has ever appeared. The different methods offered in this work form a 

 combination based upon those employed by the best French and Ger- 

 man operators. His manner of collecting and preparing fishes and 

 reptiles is of the best kind. One in the German by Dr. W. Shilling, 

 published at Weimar in 1860-61, in three volumes, is one of the best 

 foreign works with which I have met. Philipp Leopold Martin, in 1870, 

 published at Weimar a most creditable and complete exposition of our 



