Ij_^ METHODS IN THE ART OF TAXIDERMY. 



painstaking and labor we are compelled to give it up in disgust. 

 The time to take out blood stains and grease is when the skin is fresh. 

 Never, upon any consideration allow a bird skin or a mounted specimen 

 to leave your hands with a thick coat of fat on the inside and blood 

 stains on the feathers. While skinning fat birds use plenty of corn 

 meal and plaster, scrape the fat all loose and allow the plaster and meal 

 to absorb it. Scrape it again and again, put in more clean meal and 

 plaster until every vestige of fat has disappeared. Use the home-made 

 scraper described on page 16. If the feathers are soiled with grease and 

 stained with blood treat them with turpentine and dry them as above 

 directed with plaster. Do not allow a specimen to leave your hands 

 without being thoroughly and properly cleaned. I have removed grease 

 from the inside of very fat skins by an application of hot sand and 

 plaster — using the white sand and applying it abundantly in the same 

 manner described for the meal and plaster. When blood is hard dried 

 upon feathers it is almost impossible to efface it. When it is a bad case 

 we frequently have to pull the feathers out that are stained and replace 

 them with others from the same bird, I have removed old stains from 

 feathers with very satisfactory results in the following manner : Take 

 a quantity of water and alcohol — about half of each ; wash the stained 

 parts with this and then apply a thin paste of corn-starch to them and 

 allow it to remain there until drv. 



The best time to clean the feathers of a bird that is to be mounted 

 is just before it is placed upon its perch. 



Relaxing Bird Skins. — There are many ways in which a dry bird 

 skin may be relaxed and made ready to mount, and nearly every taxi- 

 dermist has his own method. I consider the following method the 

 simplest, easiest and most effective : 



The skin should be opened and the entire filling removed. Tear 

 some cotton cloth into strips from an inch to two inches in width, wet 

 them thoroughly in warm water and wrap them around the leg and foot 

 until they are covered with several thicknesses of the wet cloth. Lift 

 up the wing and put two or three thicknesses of wet cloth around the 

 joint, and also between the wing and body. Put some wet rags inside 

 the skin, wrap the whole skin completely in several thicknesses of wet 

 cloth and lay the skin aside. If the bird is not larger than a robin, the 

 skin will be soft enough to mount in about twelve or fourteen hours. 



It is necessary to place all birds above the size of the robin under 

 the head of large btrds^ for the reason that the legs, being large and 

 thick in comparison with the skin of the body, require longer treatment. 

 The legs of some birds require several days' soaking, and were the skin 



