340 ON PRESERVING BIRDS. 



themselves, they would have a very mean and shrivelled 

 appearance. 



In the act of skinning a bird, you must either have it 

 upon a table, or upon your knee. Probably, you wiU 

 prefer your knee ; because when you cross one knee over 

 the other, and have the bird upon the uppermost, you. can 

 raise it to your eye, or lower it, at pleasure, by means of 

 the foot on the ground, and then your knee will always 

 move in unison with your body, by which much stooping 

 will be avoided and lassitude prevented. 



With these precautionary hints in mind, we will now 

 proceed to dissect a bird. Suppose we take a hawk. The 

 little birds will thank us, with a song for his death, for he 

 has oppressed them sorely; and in size he is just the 

 thing. His skin is also pretty tough, and the feathers 

 adhere to it. 



We wiU piit close by us a little bottle of the solution of 

 corrosive sublimate in alcohol ; also a stick like a common 

 knitting-needle, and a handful or two of cotton. Now fill 

 the mouth and nostrils of the bird with cotton, and place 

 it upon your knee on its back, with its head pointing to 

 your left shoulder. Take hold of the knife with your two 

 first fingers and thumb, the edge upwards. You must not 

 keep the point of the knife perpendicular to the body of 

 the bird ; because, were you to hold it so, you would cut 

 the inner skin of the belly, and thus let the bowels out. 

 To avoid this, let your knife be parallel to the body, and 

 then you will divide the outer skin with great ease. 



Begin on the belly below the breast-bone, and cut down 

 the middle, quite to the vent. This done, put the bird in 

 any convenient position, and separate the skin from the 

 body, till you get at the middle joint of the thigh. Cut it 

 through, and do nothing more there at present, except 

 introducing cotton all the way on that side, from the vent 



