TREATMENT OF A CEPHALOPOD 285 



accurate moulds and castings from the models, and then they once 

 more pass to Mr. Baldwin's hands to be coloured. After this operation, 

 and when perfectly dry, they may either be tastefully mounted upon 

 properly tinted pieces of small boards of a suitable kind of wood, dressed 

 down to a right thickness, or they may play their part in a group, wherein 

 all the natural surroundings of such creatures are reproduced, save the 

 element in which they exist. This specimen of Octopus vulgaris was 

 based on the figure given by Verany, as was also the model of Sepia 

 officinalis, shown in Plate XVI., and in one of Histioteuthis bonelliana, 

 shown in Plate XVII., and so may be relied upon as being more or less 

 true to nature. 



Unless one has seen one of these unfinished gelatine casts of such 

 an animal as an Octopus, it is hard to realise what a perfect representa- 

 tion it gives us of the living animal; and, the cast being perfectly 

 pliable, much as is the best of good rubber, it still further enhances the 

 resemblance to the original. But to produce this requires skill and 

 art of a very high order at nearly every step of the process. In the 

 first place, if we are to model from a drawing, that drawing must be 

 known to be accurate ; if we model from a. specimen, we must be sure 

 about placing it in a posture that the animal is known to habitually 

 assume. Great skill is next required in making a perfect model or 

 copy of the design or specimen, and then it goes without saying that it 

 is only through long experience and care that the necessary moulds and 

 casts are obtained. Much depends at last upon the abihty of the 

 artist to faithfully colour the result of all the previous efforts ; that is, 

 the trimmed cast. 



By this it appears that, strange to say, their Invertebrata, 

 certainly the Cephalopoda, are not cast direct from the natural 

 objects, but are made up as wax or clay (" plastic ") models 

 from figures in some book ! From these, moulds in plaster are 

 made, from wrhich the gelatine models are cast — a method which 

 will not, of course, commend itself to a scientific person, however 

 pretty and striking the results may be, for they are purely artistic 

 conceptions, and not scientific delineations of natural objects ; 

 and the plates, being fortunately derived from photographs, 

 show this to be the case, for even in the sepia — too common 



