HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. Ill 



the pride of the city, began to devise means for the preservation of 

 the dead birds. To this end the best chemists of Amsterdam were 

 called in for consultation, and it was decided to skin the birds and fill 

 their skins with the spices of the Indies for their preservation. This 

 was done, and they v^^ere then wired and mounted to represent life. 

 For many years they were the hobby of the nobleman and the pride of 

 the inhabitants. 



But with these few very faint and unsatisfactory glimpses we have 

 taken of our art, through the dark corridors of time, we must leave its 

 past history to the oblivion that surrounds it, and look at the attempts 

 of more modern times. 



Very interesting allusions are frequently made to taxidermic speci- 

 mens in some of the world's greatest literature. In Shakespeare's 

 Romeo and Juliet, Act V, Scene 1, Romeo, in addressing Juliet, says: 



" I do r'imembor an apothecary, — 

 And hereabouts he dwells, whom late I noted 

 In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, 

 Ciillinu; of simples; meagre were his looks, 

 .Sharp misery had worn him to the bones: 

 And in his needj' shop a tortoise hung, 

 An alligator stuff'd, and other skins 

 Of ill-shap'd fishes." 



Samuel Butler, in Hudibras, gives us a picture in the astrologer, 

 Sidrophel's laboratory. 



It would be difficult to supply a better stock in trade for a wizard's 

 den than that which Hogarth has furnished the apartment in his illus- 

 tration of this scene. It is the most striking, if not the best, of 

 Hogarth's illustrations of the Hudibras. Everything we see in the 

 room bespeaks the cunning craft of the astrologer in the ignorance of 

 his fellow-creatures. Besides two globes, terrestial and celestial, and 

 the spread scroll with its cabalistic signs, there is a stuffed crocodile, 

 a sword fish, a tortoise, a bat, frog, snake and a few lizards. There 

 is also a human skeleton with an owl mounted upon its shoulder. 

 The room is luridly illumined by a burning lamp which is suspended 

 by a chain from the crocodile, which seems to be the presiding genius 

 of the place. 



Not only do we know that examples of taxidermy decorated the 

 dens of astrologers and the shops of apothecaries in the middle ages, 

 but many a trophy of a day's hunt adorned the stately halls of pal- 

 aces. The head and antlers of the stag which was laid low by "my lord's 

 prowess" were preserved and hung as a memento of the chase. In 

 recent years, as in the past, those in the humbler walks of life have 



