SEC. VII HOW TO MAKE A BIRDSKIN 53 



rump, so you will have both hands free. Let it swing clear of the 

 wall or table, at any height most convenient. The steel hooks of a 

 dissecting case are not always large enough ; use a stout fish-hook 

 with the barb filed off. Work with your nails, assisted by the 

 scalpel if necessary. I know of no bird, and I think there is none, 

 in England at least, the skin of which is so intimately adherent by 

 fibrous or muscular tissue as to require actual dissecting throughout; 

 a gannet comes, perhaps, as near this as any ; but in many cases 

 the knife may be constantly employed with advantage. Use it 

 with long clean sweeping strokes, hugging the skin rather than the 

 body. The knee and shoulder commonly require disarticulation, 

 unless you use bone-nippers or strong shears. To make the four 

 cuts of the skull may need a very able-bodied instrument, even a 

 chisel. The wings will give the most trouble, and they require a 

 special process ; for you cannot readily break up the adhesions of 

 the secondary quills to the ulna, nor is it desirable that very large 

 feathers should be deprived of this natural support. Hammer or 

 nip off the great head of the upper-arm bone, just below the insertion 

 of the breast-muscles ; clean the rest of that bone and leave it in. 

 Tie a string around it (what sailors call " two half-hitches " gives a 

 secure hold on the bony cylinder), and tie it to the other humerus, 

 inside the skin, so that the two bones shall be rather less than their 

 natural distance apart. After the skin is brought right side out, 

 attack the wings thus : Spread the wing under side uppermost, and 

 secure it on the table by driving a tack or brad through the wrist- 

 joint ; this fixes the far end, while the weight of the skin steadies 

 the other. Raise a whole layer of the under wing-coverts, and make 

 a cut in the skin thus exposed, from elbow to wrist, in the middle 

 line between the two fore-arm bones. Eaise the flaps of skin and 

 all the muscle is laid bare ; it is to be removed. This is best done 

 by lifting each muscle from its bed separately, slipping the handle of 

 the scalpel under the individual muscles ; there is little if any bony 

 attachment except at each end, and this is readily severed. Strew 

 in arsenic ; a little cotton may be used to fill the bed of muscle 

 removed from a very large bird ; bring the flaps of skin together, 

 and smooth down the coverts ; you need not sew up the cut, for 

 the coverts will hide the opening ; in fact, the operation does not 

 show at all after the make-up. Stufl&ng of large birds is not 

 commonly done with only the four pieces already directed. The 

 eyeballs, and usually the neck-cylinder, go in as before ; the body 

 may be filled any way you please, provided you do not put in too 

 much stuffing nor get any between the shoulders. Large birds had 

 better have the leg-bones wrapped to nearly natural size. Observe 

 that the leg -muscles do not form a cylinder, but a cone ; let the 

 wrapping taper naturally from top to bottom. Attention to this 



