Guide to Taxidermy 73 



strips of heavy j^^P^r or thin card, fastened to each 

 wing, one above and one on the under side. They 

 are held in place by shoving pins through the wing 

 and both papers; a thin slice of a cork stopper in- 

 serted on the point of each pin and pushed down 

 against the feathers will hold it very firmly. 



Herons and Other Lon^-Necked 

 Birds 



The neck that you manufacture on your excelsior 

 body should be nearly or quite as long as the one 

 you removed, whatever the position a bird is to be 

 placed in. When a heron sits, as it usually does, 

 with its head drawn down on its shoulders, its neck 

 is not shortened in the least, but is bent downward 

 and then upwards and back upon itself as illustrat- 

 ed in the heron positions on sketches on this page. 

 It is quite a clever job to smoothly wind the long 

 neck of a heron. Carefully and as evenly as pos- 

 sible, wind cotton along the wire, shaping it and 

 tapering it to the size and length of the original. 

 Then take perhaps up to a dozen turns witli your 

 cotton twine around the body and neck, passing 

 the string around the small end of the body diag- 

 onally up and around the top end of the neck, 

 back and forth severil times; this firmly attaches 

 the neck winding to the body, preventing it from 



