VOL. XLV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. SOQ 



which it is to be transported. Take care, in placing it, to give a natural posi- 

 tion to the neck, the legs, &c. At the bottom of the box or the barrel there is 

 to be a layer, of the thickness of about an inch, of the same powder with which 

 the cavity of the body is filled, or of any of those which are proper for it. You 

 bury the bird in this powder, and put enough of it about it and upon it, so as to 

 cover it with a layer of the thickness of an inch or more. The outward powder 

 will make it dry the sooner, and keep off voracious insects, which will not care 

 to attempt to pierce through it in order to come to the flesh they are fond of. 

 During the first days, and even during the first weeks, the birds may cast a bad 

 smell, which you need not be uneasy at, for it will lessen in proportion to the 

 bird's drying ; and it will dry so that none of the feathers will come off; and 

 when it is once dried, they stick fast to it for ever. This way of preserving 

 birds, which is very simple, has procured to M. Reaumur some from very remote 

 countries, which arrived as wished for. 



- The fourth way is one by which birds are more speedily dried, than by that 

 which is explained before; it is to dry them by the heat of an oven. You make 

 use of that heat which remains in it after the bread is taken out of it ; sometimes 

 it is then too great, but there is a plain way to be sure that the degree of heat is 

 not so great, which is, to put feathers into the oven, and to take them out 5 or 

 6 minutes after ; if you find that they are not singed, nor turned red, you need 

 not be under any apprehension for the feathers of the bird to be put into the 

 oven. Small ones need remain in it only 1 or 2 hours, to be sufficiently dried ; 

 those of a middling size require a longer time ; and those which are large and 

 very fleshy, ought to be put in at several times. When they are cold, you may 

 know whether they are dried enough, by pressing with the finger the flesh of the 

 legs and of the breast ; if it does not yield, or yields but little under the finger, 

 the bird does not any more want to be put into the oven. The inconveniency 

 attending its being kept there longer than necessary, is, that some parts of it, as 

 for instance, the neck and the rump, are rendered too brittle. You will prevent 

 the bird's bulk sensibly diminishing in the oven, if, before you put it in, you 

 fill the cavities of its body and the neck with some soft stuffs, like any of those 

 which we mentioned to be used for filling the cavities of such birds as are in- 

 tended to be preserved by means of spirit of wine, viz. hemp, flax, cotton, &c. 

 What is the most difficult in the way of drying birds in the oven, is not hitting 

 the proper degree of heat, and to know the time how long they are to be kept 

 in it : here will be the difficulty, how, as this way of drying requires the bird 

 may be kept in a natural attitude, before it is put into the oven : if dried, it will 

 be fixed for ever in that which it once received. 



Dried birds ought to be sent in boxes or barrels sufficiently closed up, that 

 insects may not slip in during the journey ; and care should be taken to fill up 



