i62 TAXIDERMY AND MODELLING 



of the bones are well drilled and syringed at first, to cause 

 grease to set within the porosities or cancellated tissue, and to 

 remove this the cold water process is necessary, although re- 

 boiling in plenty of water charged with Hudson's soap is often 

 efficacious. Strange to say, skulls seldom or never grease in 

 boiling if proper precautions are taken, and 'fishes' skeletons 

 never, if the flesh is just scalded off the bones. Sometimes, 

 however, in spite of the utmost care in boiling, there is one 

 bone or another, either in a mammal or bird, which will persist 

 in remaining greasy, and this bone must then be treated by 

 itself 



In hunting expeditions, it is impossible to do more than 

 roughly trim the bones, to disarticulate the skull and limb-bones, 

 and to pack them within the " cage " of the body to take up as 

 little space as possible. Nearly every arsenic-advocate advises 

 the thick painting of such a rough specimen with his favourite 

 poison ; such men should be allowed to do nothing else than 

 to try to trim, macerate, and bleach arsenically- prepared 

 skeletons, which, if it did not make them wiser, would certainly 

 make them sadder men. 



The actual methods of wiring the bones together, and the 

 preparation of ligamentary skeletons, are so much matters of 

 individual expertness that they need not be described, coming 

 easily with a little experience. A correspondent has, however, 

 described his method of dispensing with wires in making a 

 ligamentary skeleton of some size, and, as this appears to have 

 borne the test of practicability, it is worth mentioning : — 



I find that after clipping and macerating has gone on till the flesh ceases 

 to " fur " in the water, the ligaments remain tenacious. At this period I 

 wash the entire skeleton with chloride of lime and water, using, of course, 

 great care, and, after brushing the object with a soft brush and rinsing it, I 

 set it up with props in the required attitude (of course the skull has always 

 to be detached). The skeletons dry in the required position with the liga- 



