in. tl 
MUSEUMS. 301 
restore majesty to the face of a lion’s skin, ferocity 
to the tiger’s countenance, innocence to that of the 
lamb, or sulkiness to that of the bull, he would not 
know which way to set to work: he would have no 
resources at hand to help him in the operation ; he 
could not call to mind one idea which would enable 
him to restore the protuberance which is seen over 
the eye, or to give boldness to the front, or expression 
to the lips, or beauty to the cheeks, or, in fine, sym- 
metry to the whole. He could produce nothing 
beyond a mere dried specimen, shrunk too much in 
this part, or too bloated in that; a mummy, a dis- 
tortion, an hideous bs arg a failure in every sense 
of the word. 
But how comes it, that such clever and enter- 
prising men, as those generally are who have the 
appointment of working-curators to museums, should 
never yet have discovered the true cause which has 
occasioned all their errors and mistakes? The an- 
swer is brief and easy. They have not gone the 
right way to work in their attempts to overcome 
the difficulties which stared them in the face. They 
seem not to have reflected sufficiently that the 
quadruped, before they skinned it, was of beautiful 
form, and of just proportions, and had that in its 
outward appearance which pleased the eye of every 
beholder ; but that no sooner had they taken the skin 
off, than it had lost its beauty, and these fine pro- 
portions; and that the parts which still in some mea- 
sure retained the appearance which they had in life 
would, in the course of a short time, contract and 
dry in, and put on a very shriveled and mummy- 
