392 TAXIDERMY AND MODELLING 



woodland ; this, if picked in the autumn,, dries beautifully, and, 

 with a little care, can be made to do so almost naturally. It 

 takes colour finely, and, as it is often found with the chlorophyll 

 partly discharged and of a fine yellow, red, or crimson-red, it 

 can be used when in this stage without any colouring, and forms 

 an agreeable contrast to the greens and greys of the remainder 

 of the group. 



The colouring of this fern is by no means all green, as it 

 appears to the unaided judgment, and nothing is more grievous 

 than the generally adopted plan of getting a bundle of bracken, 

 a pot of dark green paint, and a labourer to daub the colour 

 on. Examine a fern with critically artistic judgment, and 

 observe the change from the yellowish-green tip to the other 

 greens, blues, and greys of the remainder, then the yellows, 

 oranges, crimsons, dull reds, purples, greyish blues, and olives of 

 others. Instead of one colour, and that dark green, the palette 

 needs to be set with all the pigments, including white and black, 

 as if a picture were to be painted ; and it is a picture to be 

 painted, which, instead of taking one half minute to do, may 

 take several minutes, but the effect is that approaching nature, 

 and is not a dull, lustreless, or shiny daub of dark green paint. 

 Formula 84 will be found the most useful vehicle with which 

 to thin the colours, and by thinning the colours is meant just the 

 dipping of the hoghair brushes now and then into the medium to 

 distribute the colours properly and to blend them, and, as before 

 noted for the grasses, there must be body, but not an unnatural 

 gloss. 



This roughly summarises the dried plants which, either with 

 or without modelled foliage, are available in the mounting of 

 animals as single specimens or in groups, and thus dismisses 

 those of the heath, moor, wood, and mountain, and leads to 

 a consideration of the available plants of the sea coasts. 



Sea-coast and marine plants which can be dried and used 



