MANUAL OF TAXIDERMY. 



PART L — BIRDS. 



CHAPTER I. 



COLLECTING. 



Section I. : Trapping, etc. — Several devices 

 for securing birds for specimens may be success- 

 fully practised, one of the simplest of which is the 

 box-trap, so familiar to every schoolboy. If this 

 be baited with an ear of corn and placed in woods 

 frequented by jays, when the ground is covered 

 with snow, and a few kernels of corn scattered 

 about, as an attraction, these usually wary birds 

 will not fail to enter the trap. I have captured 

 numbers in this way, in fact, the first bird which I 

 ever skinned and mounted, was a blue jay, caught 

 in a box-trap. I was only a small boy then, so I do 

 not now remember what first suggested mounting 

 the bird, but the inherent desire to preserve the 

 specimen must have been fully as strong then as 

 in later years, or I never could have brought 

 myself to the point of killing a bird in cold blood. 



