﻿PROCESS OF PRESERVATION. 



273 



The same may be done with the ducks and the waders. 

 Nor will this contraction at all affect the subsequent 

 process of mounting : if it is desired that the bird 

 should be put in an attitude which required the neck to 

 be lengthened, this extension can be accomplished with- 

 out difficulty ; but when the neck has been dried in an 

 extended position, no art can ever reduce it effectually 

 to lesser dimensions. 



(226.) Some few exceptions and general cautions 

 may be here mentioned in addition to the foregoing 

 instructions. Some birds, particularly the pigeons and 

 cuckows, have their skin remarkably thin, and generally 

 very fat ; the greatest care must therefore be used in 

 detaching it from the flesh, and the operator must be 

 very cautious in his efforts to remove the fat, otherwise 

 he will repeatedly tear the skin ; the best way for ac- 

 complishing the latter object is by gently scraping it 

 upwards with a blunt knife, and then applying powdered 

 chalk to absorb the oily substance which exudes on the 

 pressure of the finger. Most of the sea birds will require 

 this process, and nearly the whole of the clucks. All 

 rasorial birds, and their respective types, have thick 

 skins * ; in tenuirostral types, on the other hand, the skin 

 is generally very thin. It is hardly necessary with the 

 humming birds to clean out the inside of the skull, or 

 the flesh from the wings and feet ; but the body and 

 neck should always be removed. In warm latitudes, 

 where every thing that is dead is liable to be imme- 

 diately attacked by ants, the collector should take the 

 precaution of washing the bill and legs with a little of 

 the arsenic soap ; and only to expose his specimens for 

 the purpose of drying, when he, or some one else, can 

 look at them every ten or fifteen minutes. The colour 

 of the eyes and feet, and the contents of the stomach 

 and crop, should be noted down ; and the tongue of each 

 species either drawn, described, or preserved. The 



* This is a very remarkable circumstance, and is one of the most beau- 

 tiful of all those analogies which assimilate the ungulated quadrupeds as a 

 whole, and the Pachydermates as a type, to the order Rasores, and the 

 tribe of Scansores, among birds. 



T 



