210 PRACTICAL TAXIDERMY. 



The skin of fishes also, which, when dry, shrinks away above 

 the eye and around the month and lips, should have these 

 parts replaced by wax before colouring, in the manner practised 

 on the new specimens in the Leicester Museum. So little, how- 

 ever, is the want of this understood, that, of the thousands of 

 stuffed fishes exhibited in the Fisheries Exhibition, I looked in 

 vain for one with unshrivelled lips or orbital ridges. For the 

 credit of artistic taxidermy, let us hope I overlooked some, 

 finished as they should be. 



The fins of fishes may be repaired with thin tissue paper, or, if 

 finless by accident — *"ware cat!" — may be replaced by wax. 

 White wax may be coloured in some instances before using. 

 Paraffin wax does in some situations, but is not a very tractable 

 medium. Dry colours may sometimes be rubbed into the wax 

 with advantage. The colouring of a fish's skin, which, when set 

 up and dried, is colourless, as noted at page 180„ is a nice 

 operation involving some artistic ability,- the same remarks 

 apply as those upon the colouring of the bills and feet of 

 oirds (see ante), but with this difference, that although the 

 colour should be thinhj applied as directed, yet in this instance 

 the appearance of wetness has to be represented. In ordinary 

 taxidermic work this is managed by adding clear "paper" 

 varnish, or " Roberson's medium," to the colours, thinned by 

 turpentine, floating the tints on the skin of the specimen, and 

 nicely blending them, in order to obviate unnatural streaks or 

 bands of colour. 



Speaking of the duck-billed platypus, the Rev. J. G. Wood, in 

 " Homes without Hands," has some pertinent remarks upon the 

 manner in which nearly all taxidermists allow the cuticle to dry 

 and shrivel, to the ultimate distortion of the surrounding parts : 



"The wonderful duck-like mandibles into which the head is 

 prolonged are sadly misrepresented in the stuffed specimens 

 which we generally see, and are black, flat, stiff, and shrivelled, 

 as if cut from shoe leather. The dark colour is unavoidable, at 

 all events in the present state of taxidermy. Bare skin in- 

 variably becomes blackish-brown by lapse of time, no matter 

 what the previous colour may have been, so that the delicate 

 tints of an English maiden's cheek and the sable hue of the 

 blackest negro would in a few years assume the same dingy 



