208 PRACTICAL TAXIDERMY. 



The colours tliat are most useful are chrome yellow, yellow ochre, 

 Prussian blue, permanent blue, light red, burnt umber, flake white, 

 and vermilion. With these every shade of grey, blue, green, red, 

 or pink can be obtained ; they are all cheap, but if a quantity of 

 vermiHon is desired, it is cheapest bought as a powder at the 

 oilman's, and mixed as required. When colour tubes are not 

 procurable, the same colours are to be obtained at the oilman's 

 in powder, or ready mixed, which latter must be thinned with one 

 part transparent paper varnish to two parts turpentine (turps), 

 the varnish being added or decreased as dry or mixed colours are 

 used. " Brunswick black," a cheap and durable brown, if laid 

 on thinly, i.e., thinned with turps, is sometimes used for colour- 

 ing the noses of mammals. It must be recollected, however, 

 that greys predominate in some noses over browns, and .that 

 the surface is seldom of one tint, hence *' Brunswick black " is 

 seldom used by artists, who prefer to make tints from some of 

 the colours mentioned. 



Faces of parrots must be whitened with dry " flake white " 

 applied with a piece of cotton wool. 



The bills of toucans, and similar birds, require some nice 

 coloui-ing to blend the various tints one within the other. If 

 the reader requires a more scientific method of doing this, I 

 must refer him to " Waterton's Wanderings in South America," 

 in which work he will find an account of the manner in which 

 that eccentric naturalist cut out the insides of his toucans' biUs, 

 paring them down to the outer layer, through which the subse- 

 quent artificially-introduced colour was revealed. 



It would, no doubt, be possible to introduce colour into combs 

 and wattles, and also into the bills of some species of birds by 

 subcutaneous injections of various dyes when the specimen was 

 fresh, but as all taxidei-mists are not skilled anatomists, and 

 have not too much time to spare in doing what is — at best — but 

 an unsatisfactory and unpractical method, I may relieve their 

 anxiety by saying at once that the difficulty attendant on shrinkage 

 of the integument may be avoided by using wax, with which 

 to thinly paint the large bills of some birds, and the legs of all, 

 restoring also the fleshy appearance of wattles, &c. Let us take 

 one or two representative birds — first, an eagle, to work upon, 

 Premising that your bird is finished and dry, and that you have 



