CHAPTER XIII. 



THE MOUNTING OF CRUSTACEANS, FISHES, REPTILES, ETC. 



I am indebted to Mr. Frederic A. Lucas, of the National Museum, 

 for the use of his vahiable paper " On the Mounting of Crustaceans.'''* 

 The figures in brackets refer to Plate LXXXII, which is intended to 

 illustrate this article : 



"The mounting of crabs, lobsters and other crustaceans is some- 

 what of a thankless task, requiring an outlay of considerable time and 

 trouble to arrive at results at all satisfactory. At first sight it would 

 seem an easy matter to mount an animal whose form is determined 

 beforehand, but a little trial develops the fact that, like bringing up 

 children, it is much easier in theory than in practice. As crustaceans 

 dry they become very brittle, and the small legs and delicate feelers 

 break only too readily. Worse than all, the beautiful colors with 

 which these creatures are adorned while living fade rapidly, and the 

 only way in which they can be renewed is by a dextrous use of paint. 

 Therefore, the great requisites for mounting crustaceans are a careful 

 touch, a good eye for colors, and some knowledge of the proper meth- 

 ods of applying them. The preparation of crustaceans is a little 

 peculiar, inasmuch as, instead of the skin being removed from the 

 body, the body is removed piecemeal from the skin. The first step in 

 this process is to detach the carapace (Fig. 1) or covering of the back, 

 and this, in many crabs, is a work of considerable time and patience. 

 Commence by inserting a knife-blade — an ordinary table-knife is 

 good — at the junction of the body with the tail and work it carefully 

 around the hinder portion of the shell until it is detached. Now pry 

 up the back portion of the shell, cutting away the attachments as fast 

 as they can be reached, and the carapace will soon come away from the 

 body (Fig. 2), leaving the modified legs that surround the mouth at- 

 tached to the body. To scrape the flesh from the carapace and ex- 

 posed portions of the body, is an easy matter, and it is only needful to 

 exercise a little care not to scrape through the upper joints of the legs. 

 To clean the legs it will be necessary to make some small hooked 

 scrapers by flattening, sharpening and bending one end of a piece of 

 annealed wire (Fig. 3) sufficiently long to run the entire length of the 

 leg. These scrapers are inserted in openings made between the joints 



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