MUSEUMS. 



S31 



used the bow. He may tell him, forsooth, to draw 

 the horse-hair at right angles over the catgut ; and 

 he may add directions how the learner is to stop 

 and shift, and stop and shift again, until he shall 

 produce delightful music. But this will avail him 

 nothing. The lad will scrape and scrape again, for 

 want of personal instructions, till at last the man 

 who is doomed to be punished by his grating will 

 cry out, — 



" Old Orpheus play'd so well, he moved Old Nick ; 

 But thou movest nothing but thy fiddle-stick." 



I have turned this new discovery ten thousand times 

 over in my mind, and I invariably come to the same 

 conclusion ; viz. that I cannot give sufficient in- 

 struction by means of the pen alone. I am placed 

 in a situation somewhat like that of the French 

 cook, who was ordered by his king to make a dish 

 out of that which put his culinary powers utterly at 

 defiance. " I have turned it every way, an't please 

 your Majesty," said he ; " and I have tried it with 

 every kind of sauce ; but, positively, I cannot make 

 a dish of it." Neither can I effect, through the 

 medium of the pen, that which I could wish to do 

 in this case. Wherefore, I beg to inform the reader 

 tliat it requires the dissecting hand of the instruc- 

 tor, and from two to three weeks of actual work 

 upon a specimen, to render the novice an adept in 

 this new mode of preserving quadrupeds for cabinets 

 of natural history. But, as I have neither leisure 

 nor inclination to assemble pupils around me, I 

 must request him who approves of the plan to be 



