HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 



IT is not my intention to elaborate on the history of a subject whose 

 life has been so short and uneventful as that of the art of taxidermy. 

 Our " great lights " in the art are few, and if we cannot point to exam- 

 ples as ancient as those which immortalize the grandeur of other arts, it 

 may be because its objects in their very nature are perishable. If there 

 were any early attempts in the art, the subjects must have been so in- 

 artistic and unnatural looking while they lasted that they were per- 

 haps regarded as curious, but as works of art were probably never rec- 

 ognized and were never recorded in history, tradition, poetry or song, 

 and, meteor-like, their rays were soon lost in the firmament of the fixed 

 planets of other arts whose light will continue to shine for all time. 

 Were the examples as desirable as those of sculpture or painting, we 

 should be able to trace their history to very remote periods. 



If the mounting of the skins of vertebrate animals to appear life- 

 like was carried on in ancienttimes, we have no evidence as to the quality 

 of the work or by whom it was done. 



An old narrative of the Carthaginian navigator, Han no, has been 

 verified through extensive research, and that portion relating to the 

 original discovery of the gorilla may possibly have a bearing on the 

 question of the antiquity of our art. By this record, five hundred years 

 before the Christian era this old voyager recorded the capture of goril- 

 las and the preservation of their skins; or, as the record has it, "we 

 killed and skinned them, and conveyed their skins to Carthage." His- 

 tory also relates that these skins were preserved in the temple of 

 Astarte, where they remained until the taking of the city in the year 146 

 before Christ, as stated by Pliny, who called them Gorgoies. 



From this, however, we cannot infer that these specimens were 

 mounted or arranged to represent life-like attitudes, but simply that 

 the skins were preserved. If our art is of ancient date, we have no 

 relics of it, as we find in the other arts, as lasting as those of Grecian 

 sculpture, which date back as far as the eighth century B. C. The 

 famous Lion Gate at ]\Iy cense is supposed to be even older. We 

 have no monuments in our art that defy the march of time like the 

 bronze Discobolus of Myron, yet to be seen in the Vatican at Rome, 

 and many others of equal antiquity and value. We have no traces of 



(I) 



