TAWING, OR WHITE LEATHER DRESSING 163 



ments, which shrink to nothing, and hold for ever. I have not only used 

 this method with moles, bats, a jerboa, etc., but with cats, monkeys, large fish, 

 and even human limbs — all with great success. This I term the "natural" 

 method, but although I discovered the process for myself, yet it is probably 

 well known.i It has the merit of saving an infinity of trouble, and shows no 

 wires. Should a joint come apart I fasten it again with gum tragacanth, 

 and usually the skull in this manner. Tragacanth, as you are doubtless 

 aware, dries with hardly any bulk. Lionel E. Adams. 



A cartilaginous sternum is best treated, after careful steep- 

 ing in water, by the process given at p. 34 (Formulae 7 and 8). 



Ordinarily, animals are represented with the bones arranged 

 in one of the positions the animal assumes in life, and this 

 has been carried even farther, for a dog's skeleton has been 

 represented as holding that of a rat, and so on until the cul- 

 minating point was reached by the arrangement of the skeleton 

 of the man and horse as in motion at the South Kensington 

 Museum, all duly enhanced by a background, in black velvet, 

 showing the contours of the bodies. 



For biological students, other methods of setting up have 

 been devised, and probably the plan now followed in the 

 Leicester Museum is, although somewhat diagrammatic, a little 

 improvement on some of them, whilst the charting of the 

 bones — both of existing and extinct vertebrate animals — by 

 distinguishing colours is believed to be confined at present 

 to this institution. 



Leather 



The making of leather hardly comes within the scope of 

 such a work as this, but, as there may be some persons hardy 

 enough to do the dirtiest possible work, involving a maximum 

 of trouble with a minimum of gain, they are referred to an 

 article upon leather by Mr. James Paton, Curator of the Corpora- 

 tion Galleries of Art, Glasgow, Encyclopcedia Britannica, ninth 

 ^ This is so ; see Boitard, Granger, Gestro, and others. 



