330 MUSEUMS. 



and this will facilitate the carriage. When dividing 

 it, the operator must take care to hold his knife so 

 as to humour the angle which the fur forms with 

 the skin. Thus, were I to cut a preserved skin in 

 two parts, the blade of my knife would point to the 

 head, and the haft the tail of the animal. By 

 attention to this, not a hair of the fur will be cut 

 during the operation. 



I will just add here (although it be a digression), 

 that there is no difficulty in making the legs and 

 feet of eagles, turkeys, and other large birds, retain, 

 their natural size. You may go through every 

 known museum, and you will find that the legs of 

 these, and of all large birds, are dried and shrivelled, 

 as though they belonged to the mummies of ancient 

 days. In order to give the legs of birds a natural 

 appearance, and a natural size, the skin, from the 

 very claws to the top of the leg, must be separated 

 from the bone by running a working-iron betwixt 

 it and the bone, and then modelling the skin with 

 the working-iron. 



The wattles of fowls, the caruncles of turkeys, 

 and the combs of cocks, by the simple process of 

 internal modelling, may be made to retain their 

 natural size. 



I have now given an outline of the mode of pre- 

 serving quadrupeds upon scientific principles. Here, 

 then, I stop ; for I can go on no farther. I can no 

 more explain, by the agency of my pen, how to 

 make the thousand and one little touches which are 

 necessary to insure success, than a fiddler can con- 

 vey instructions by letter to one who has never 



