28 The Teeming East 



A Triceratops, for the Paris Museum, with little 

 more than a knife or two, a few chisels and 

 brushes and sacks of plaster, in a room that had 

 only about two feet of extra space around the 

 skull. Also with similar tools, he had taken the 

 skeleton of the Titanotherium, out of the hardest 

 kind of rock, we certainly, with a few simple 

 tools should be able to mount it. We did it too. 

 We were indeed handicapped. For an anvil wc 

 secured a disk of solid steel, a strong vise, the 

 necessary half oval, and round steel, and iron 

 tubing for supports, etc. We made a great sand 

 table first, and laid out on it the skull and col- 

 umn to get the pose, often getting above it and 

 moving a bone here and there until we were satis- 

 fied. We then cut a board so as to fit the contour 

 of the under part of the column, as we had ar- 

 ranged it on the sandtable. This board was fas- 

 tened to bases by two half round pieces of steel 

 that were fastened to either side of the board in 

 pairs, one in front, and one behind. These com- 

 ing together beneath made a round rod of iron 

 that passed into iron tubes a little larger, and 

 held them where we wished, with thumb screws. 

 These supports in turn were fastened to broad 

 bases, so they would not fall over. We took a 

 cast of the under side of the centra of the verte- 

 brae, and covering the board that served as our 

 model with moulding wax, we stuck the vertebrae 

 in on the central line, giving the exact pose the 

 column had on the sand-table. An iron rod was 



