14 TAXIDERMY AND MODELLING 



The mounting of animals in picturesque and lifelike groups in the 

 midst of accessories taken from their natural haunts appears to have 

 been first attempted by Professor Paolo Savi in the early part of the 

 present century. In the museum of the University of Pisa nearly 

 one hundred of these are still preserved. One of these, a group of 

 starlings upon the head of a dead sheep, is as fine as anything since 

 produced anywhere ; and a pair of boar hounds attacking a boar is, 

 for action, the best piece of mammal mounting I have ever seen. 

 The collection is a wonderful one, and is still perfectly preserved. 



The great Exhibition of 1851, which marked an era in 

 English taxidermy, showed some notable groups executed by 

 H, Ploucquet, of Stuttgart, who, apart from the comic groups 

 and those serio-comic ones such as illustrated the fable of 

 " Reinecke the Fox," contributed such large studies as a 

 stag caught by five hounds, a wild boar set upon by three 

 hounds, a goshawk attacking a large owl, and so on.^ Soon 

 after this date, the English and others bestirred themselves, 

 and Edwin Ward produced his " Lion and Tiger Struggle " ; 

 John Wallace, " A Horseman attacked by Tigers " ; and Jules 

 Verrfeaux, " An Arab Courier attacked by Lions " ; whilst a 

 host of other " Lion and Tiger Struggles " and " Tiger and 

 Leopard Struggles" were produced by inferior men. In 1871 

 a fine group, " The Combat " (of Red Deer), was executed and 

 exhibited by Rowland Ward, and to him, and to his whole 

 family, taxidermists are indebted for many and notable 

 applications of little-known methods, and for improvements in 

 others, especially in those dealing with the larger mammals, 

 until the culminating point was reached in the largest group 

 ever attempted, viz. " The Trophy of Kooch Behar," or " The 

 Jungle," exhibited at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 

 1886, which occupied a great space. Probably it was con- 

 sidered that, in a large trophy such as this, detail was hardly 



\ The greater part of this collection is still exhibited at the Crystal Palace, 

 Sydenham. 



