PEERAGE TO SECOND EDITION. 



The First Edition of "Practical Taxidermy" having now run 

 ttrougli tlie press — with, I venture to liope, some profit to 

 students of tlie art, if I may judge from tlie many hundreds of 

 letters I have from time to time received — the publishers have 

 invited me to revise such parts of the work as may be expedient, 

 and also to add many technical methods of modelling animals 

 in an artistic manner. 



I do this the more readily because of the narrow way in 

 which most professional Taxidermists bolster up their art in a 

 secret and entirely unnecessary manner — unnecessary because 

 no amateur can, but by the severest application, possibly compete 

 with the experience of the technical or professional worker. No 

 pictorial artist ever pretends he has a special brush or colours 

 with which he can paint landscapes or sea pieces at will; he 

 knows that only thorough mastery of the technicalities of his 

 art — supplemented by wide experience and close application- 

 enables him to succeed as he does, and to delight people who, 

 seeing his facility of handling, may imagine that picture painting 

 is very easy and could be readily acquired — perhaps from books. 

 So it is with the Taxidermist. Those, therefore, who procure 



