Sept. 1886.] 

AND OOLOGIST. 

of my letters was replied to. For several years it 
has been the dearest wish of many American taxi- 
dermists whom I know, to have an opportunity 
to meet all their foreign rivals, especially the 
French, German and English, in a competitive ex- 
hibition. When that opportunity comes, as come 
it must sometime, the world shall see who are the 
“worst,” and who have adopted the “crudest 
English methods.” 
The reference to the Century illustrations im- 
pels me to relate a fact bearing upon them. 
When the illustrative material for that very mis- 
erable article, “The Taxidermal (sic) Art,” was 
being collected, at the request of the editor, the 
artist wrote to several well-known taxidermists 
of London, requesting photographs of some of 
their best work to use in illustrating the article. 
Some photographs were promptly forwarded, but 
alas, for human expectations! Mr. Beard in- 
formed me that “the work they represented was 
all so poor that the editor of the Century con- 
cluded not to use any of them.” This is very sad. 
True enough; the time was when it was neces- 
sary to confess the great superiority of European 
over American taxidermists. But that was years 
ago, when Prof. Ward’s establishment was 
founded. At that time ‘clever foreign artists”’ 
were imported, but none of them came from Eng- 
land. The education of American taxidermists 
by foreigners is entirely a thing of the past. 
Even at Prof. Ward’s there is not at present even 
one foreign taxidermist, nor has there been for 
about a year; although in the beginning the men 
from France and Germany reigned supreme. 
Like the English before us, we have learned our 
first principles from French and German sources; 
but we have been able to improve upon them, 
and go beyond them, in a way our plodding Eng- 
lish cousins never have and never will. 

PRACTICAL TAXIDERMY. 
CHAPTER XIV.—MOUNTING DAMAGED SPECIMENS. 

{In publishing these articles on Taxidermy all rights are 
reserved for future publication in book form. ] 
The following method of mounting rare speci- 
mens when badly shot on one side may be of 
some value to some of the readers of the ORrNI- 
THOLOGIST AND OGLOGIST. 
Suppose you have a bird badly torn on the 
right side. Take the skin in the ordinary way. 
Then spread your skin out before you with the 
inside uppermost. Then take your scalpel and 
cut along the middle of the skin thus from A to B, 

leaving the skin on the 
neck and head whole. Keep 
the part cut off for you may 
want the tip of the wing or 
the foot in the mounted 
specimen. Now mix some 
plaster of paris and water 
together in a deep pan, 
making a thin paste of it. 
Then take the body of the 
bird and grease it carefully 
all over the left side. Then 
cut off the neck close to the 
body and push the body 
into the plaster paste just up 
to the breast bone. Now 
put your skin in a place 
where it will not dry fast, 
and put your plaster paste 
with the body in it where 

it will dry rapidly. 
When the plaster has gotten hard take a knife 
and run it in between the plaster and the bird, all 
the way around, then take the body out; but be 
careful not to break the plaster. Now take your 
plaster impression and grease it well in every 
little cranny. Take some more plaster and water 
and mix and pour into the impression until full, 
then let it set until perfectly hard, then take out 
carefully. Now take up your skin and put just a 
trifle of cotton in the neck. Now geta nice piece 
of board and place your plaster half body on it, 
in the position you wish it. Paste it on tightly. 
Then take your half skin and fit it on; you will 
find that the feathers will lie just as they do in 
nature, for the cast is exactly the same shape as 
the body; now paste the edge of the skin all 
around and put the head and neck in position 
with pins; covering the heads with feathers. 
Now put the feet and wings in position and paste 
them there. The decorations on the panel can 
be put on a ledge running along the bottom of 
the panel, for the ground.—James Speed, Jr. 
need 
Hawking in June. 

Bashi Gag 
The tramps we take in quest of the eggs of 
Buteo are generally associated with the memory of 
the leafless woods and fickle temperature of our 
New England April. But the keen eye of the 
observing collector will detect many nests, which 
show by their construction that the architecture 
is “hawkish” in model, yet the positive knowl- 
edge that they are new to our experience, coupled 
with their weather-beaten appearance, leaves as a 
safe conclusion in our debating mind, that they 
