i6 TAXIDERMY AND MODELLING 



and other subjects, being remarkably fine, whilst the " rock- 

 work," nearly all of carefully moulded paper, was an exact 

 transcript of the rocks of the original haunts of the birds, and 

 was coloured with care and elegance.'' 



Then followed Leicester ; and the idea of using modelled 

 foliage as accessories to the groups of birds and their nests is 

 said to have originated in that town, and was taken up soon 

 afterwards by the British Museum, and later by the American 

 Government Museums. There is no doubt that s\xc\ groups 

 mark a great epoch in taxidermic work, and consequently in 

 the progress and increasing popularity of museums generally, 

 where formerly anything of the kind was rigidly tabooed. To 

 the enlightened reign of Sir William Flower at the South 

 Kensington Natural History Museum is due the development 

 of the special groups illustrating albinism, melanism, and 

 protective selection, and of the splendid Index collections. 



In America, according to Mr. Hornaday, the group system 

 was not well received, and the first group — to which, it may be 

 hoped, Plate XVI I.^ does not do justice — was refused in 1879, 

 as were several others afterwards, by the Government Museums. 

 Three years later the group was, however, accepted by the- 

 National Museum, and in 1888 the largest museum group 

 known — that of American bisons, three adults and young, 

 enclosed in a single case,' with numerous accessories — was 

 finished. Since that time others as large and important 

 have been executed, and probably at the present date their 

 groups far surpass ours in extent and size, though not in 

 handling ; for America, the most progressive of all nations, 

 is curiously behind the age in taxidermic knowledge : all 

 their essays and books upon the subject abundantly prove 

 this, and when their latest writer* is content to give 



1 This fine collection is now the property of the Brighton Corporation. 



2 Taxidermy, p. 231. ' Rep. Smithsonian Institution for 1887, Plate I. 

 * Shufeldt, Rep. Smithsonian Institution for 1892, pp. 369-436. 



