12 Scientific Society of San Antonio. 



to camera, short focus and lamp-light exposure. Most of these 

 specimens were obtained from the forest valley of San Geronimo, 

 about 28 miles northwest of San Antonio, and some of these 

 specimens are very rare and exceedingly difficult to capture. 



Among the other views, an interesting group of prairie hawks 

 is represented exactly as the hunter has seen it, in the wilder- 

 ness around Mitchell's Lake. These hawks were after a large 

 bull snake which was twisted around a dry and hollow tree, 

 seeking birds. This group was procured and mounted by 

 the late L. Toudouse, who, next to Prof. Jermy, was one of the 

 ablest taxidermists Texas ever had. Mr. Toudouse had a splen- 

 did collection of all conceivable wild animals of Texas, and his 

 mountings were sought, not alone here in Texas and up North, 

 but in Europe as well, where they still decorate some of the 

 large cities' museums. Mr. Toudouse and his sons killed most 

 of his specimens in Bexar, Bandera and Dimmit counties, at a 

 time when Texas was still abounding with a great variety of 

 wild animals and birds of prey. The larger portion of the most 

 diverse and beautiful specimens of water fowls and wild ani- 

 mals in Toudouse's collections of Texas zoological specimens 

 were killed around the famous Mitchell's Lake, which is 

 still the hunting paradise of local Nimrods. He mounted his 

 specimens in just such postures as were seen in nature during his 

 hunting trips. Entire quail families from the youngest to the 

 full grown, some on nest with ^he young peeping out ; large 

 groups of the feathery prairie tribe; wild animals of prey; 

 aquatic fowls and enormous reptiles of either rare or common 

 species, he prepared in lifelike posture, and when I visited his 

 villa some twenty years ago, I prepared a number of fine photo 

 reproductions, but, alas ! nearly all of them have been loaned out 

 or lost, else they would now, perhaps, be decorating these 

 walls as a valuable acquisition to this, the San Antonio Scientific 

 Society. 



In glancing over the charts submitted, a few of the more in j 

 teresting objects may be mentioned; for instance the scene 

 at a Rockport fishery, showing a number of man-high so- 

 called "silver kings," caught in the Gulf. Another and rare 

 view is noticed in the center of the same chart — a huge rattle- 

 snake in the act of devouring a bush rabbit. This is an unusual 

 and interesting scene. 



