Guide to Taxidermy 



123 



quires a larger and stronger knife than your scalpel 

 that was used on birds. After having skinned 

 the neck you will come to the ears. Sever these by 

 cutting directly through the tissues and cartilage. 

 Tlien skin around the base of the horns ; this is a 

 rather tedious process for the novice, but patience 

 and continued sharpening of the knife will accom- 

 plish it. Of course, in order to skin about the horns 

 you must make a cut from horn to horn, across the 

 end of your first neck cut. From the horns on, as 

 the skinning progresses, the scalp is turned inside 

 out like the taking off of a glove. Care must be 

 taken in cutting through the membrane of the eye 

 not to also cut through the lid, whicli shows through 

 i': as a whitish line. Also use caution just in front 

 of the eye, where the tear duct is located ; the sklr: 

 here lies in a hollow in the skull and must be cut 

 out carefully. The next point to look out for is the 

 corner of the mouth; here you want to cut through 

 the skin on the inside of the lip. In cutting through 

 the nostrils, which you will next meet, keep rather 

 close to the skull so as to leave enough of the skin 

 inside the nostrils to well fill it on the mounted 

 specimen. No further difficulties will be encounter- 

 ed and the skin is entirely detached from the skull. 





