THE ART OF CURING SKINS. 



The market value of skins is greatly affected by the care used in 

 skinning and curing. We take the following from Newhouse's Trap- 

 per's Guide, an authority on such matters. 



1. Be careful to visit your traps often enough, so that the skins 

 will not have time to get tainted. 



2. As soon as possible after an animal is dead and dry, attend to 

 the skinning and curing. 



3. Scrape off all superfluous flesh and fat, and be careful not to 

 go so deep as to cut the fiber of the skin. 



4. Never dry a skin by the fire or in the sun, but in a cool, 

 shady place, sheltered from the rain. If you use a barn door for a 

 stretcher (as boys sometimes do), nail the skin on the inside of the 

 door. 



5. Never use "preparations" of any kind in curing skins, nor 

 even wash them in water, but simply stretch and dry them as they 

 are taken from the animal. 



In drying skins it is important that they should be stretched tight 

 like a strained drum-head. This can be done after a fashion by sim- 

 ply nailing them flat on a wide board. But this method, besides 

 being impracticable in the woods (where most skins have to be 

 cured) is objectionable, because it exposes only one side of the pelt 

 to the air. The stretchers that are generally used by trappers, are 

 of three kinds, adapted to the skins of different classes of animals. 

 They are the board-stretcher, the bow-stretcher, and the hoop- 

 stretcher. 



THE BOARD STRETCHER. This contrivance is made in the 

 following manner: Prepare a board of bass-wood or other lignt 

 material, two feet three inches long, three inches and a half wide at 

 one end, and two inches and an eighth at the other, and three 

 eighths of an inch thick. Chamfer it from the centre to the sides 

 almost to an edge. Round and chamfer the small end about an 



