508 TAXIDERMY. 



The same patient care enabled him to give to all feathers 

 and furs the "flow'' which they possessed in life, and which 

 no method except his own has been able to restore. 



Waterton also found that two pieces of skin if properly 

 moulded together while wet, would adhere to each other firmly, 

 and that a little fine glue would cause them to unite as one 

 piece. It was through the knowledge of this fact that he was 

 able to produce the ludicrous combinations of different crea- 

 tures which he placed in his museum and ticketed with all 

 kinds of quaint names. 



There was for example, "Noctifer," or the Spirit of Night, 

 made of portions of a bittern and an eagle owl, both nocturnal 

 birds. 



Then he had an absurd group of John Bull surrounded by 

 difficulties. John Bull was a tortoise with the head of an 



NO^TIFER. 



exceedingly stout but exceedingly worried man. He was sup- 

 porting the eight hundred millions of national debt, to which 

 such frequent reference is made both in the Wanderings 

 and Essays. Clinging to his back, and driving its claws 

 into him, is perched " Diabolus bellicosus,'' a sort of grin- 

 ning lizard all over abnormal spikes and horns. Before him 



