THE HOME OF A NATURALIST. 315 



Simple in the extreme. The tools required hardly 

 deserve the name, for all these wondrous effects have 

 been produced with a penknife, a lump of wax, half-a- 

 dozen needles, and three or four wooden skewers. The 

 process is so cleanly that it can be conducted in a 

 drawing-room, without soiling the most delicate furni- 

 ture ; and we have had the pleasure of seeing the 

 inventor engaged in the manipulation of a pheasant, 

 just as a lady employs her fingers on the elaborate 

 entanglement of thread, called by courtesy her ' work.' 



In simple fact the modus agendi is pure modelling, 

 the skin being used as the material, and reduced by art 

 to the plastic state of sculptor's clay, a temporary 

 stuffing being only placed within it to keep the skin 

 moderately distended during the progress of its drying. 

 The obedience of the material to the touch of the hand 

 is almost incredible ; and in the collection may be seen 

 several specimens that have purposely been distorted 

 into all kinds of strange shapes, in order to show the 

 value of the process in the hand of a master. Frogs, 

 toads, and lizards are grotesquely transmuted into 

 caricatures of the human form; extraneous joints, 

 limbs, claws, and horns sprout from unexpected places. 



Perhaps the most striking of these transformations 

 is the well-known nondescript, wherein the natural 

 countenance of the Howler monkey has been changed 

 with such forcible and telling fidelity into the face of a 

 quaint and eccentric but genial-hearted old man, that 

 many of those who visit the museum leave it under the 



