228 TAXIDERMY AND MODELLING 



by liquids or such media, that the recognition of this fact 

 is beginning, though slowly, to be borne in upon the mind of 

 the naturalist preparator — to give an English rendering of 

 a French term, so much more comprehensive than our "taxi- 

 dermist," and so much more elegant than its common variant, 

 " stuffer," — and hence some of the more advanced in a beauti- 

 ful art, which has had but few educated or able exponents, 

 are realising that certain things must have a mould cast from 

 them, from which a model can ultimately be made. 



At present, a plaster cast represents the limit which has 

 been attained in the delineation of the lower vertebrata, and 

 even this is, as yet, rarely met with. At this stage of these 

 remarks, it may be as well to state emphatically what was before 

 insisted upon in Practical Taxidermy, viz. that no taxidermist 

 ever has mounted, or ever will mount, a fish, amphibian, reptile, 

 or cetacean even decently, or with more than a remote approxi- 

 mation to nature, by any of the resources of their art known 

 to them, and in this sweeping condemnation are included all 

 who are in any way famous in fish-taxidermy ; they and their 

 patrons are self -deceived and misguided, and the sooner this 

 patent fact is recognised the better for art. 



Take a pike as a familiar example, and take a thousand 

 taxidermists ; how many of this number are there who can 

 make such a fish other than a ghastly elongated mummy, all 

 ridges and bumps, and utterly unlike nature in many points ? 

 Probably one, and that one the great fish-taxidermist/«r excellence 

 (whoever he may be) ; and even he, although by his mistaken 

 art making it plump and fairly respectable in shape, never does, 

 and never can do anything with the head and the fleshy bases 

 of the fins. Those parts are simply mummified; all the 

 cartilage has shrunk, and there is a grinning death's-head 

 upon a plumped-out body. 



The replacement of shrunken cartilage, by wax or other 



