MUSEUMS. 
323 
liini.to restore the protuberance which is seen over 
the eye, or to give boldness to the front, or expression 
to the lips, or beauty to the cheeks, or, in fine, sym- 
metry to the whole. He could produce nothing 
beyond a mere dried specimen, shrunk too much in 
this part, or too bloated in that ; a mummy, a dis- 
tortion, a hideous spectacle, a failure in every sense 
of the word. 
But how comes it, that such clever and enter- 
prising men, as those generally are who have the 
appointment of working-curators to museums^, should 
never yet have discovered the true cause which has 
occasioned all their errors and mistakes ? The an- 
swer is brief and easy. They have not gone the 
right way to work in their attempts to overcome 
the difficulties which stared them in the face. They 
seem not to have reflected sufficiently that the 
quadruped, before they skinned it, was of beautiful 
form, and of just proportions, and had that in its 
outward appearance which pleased the eye of every 
beholder; but that no sooner had they taken the 
skin off, than it lost its beauty, and these fine pro- 
portions ; and that the parts which still in some mer^- 
sure retained the appearance which they had in life 
would, in the course of a short time, contract and 
dry in, and put on a very shriveled and mummy- 
like appearance. Add to this, that, in stuffing their 
animals, they have tried to effect by despatch what 
could only be done by a very slow process. 
Thus, in order to prevent the skins from becoming 
putrid, especially in hot climates, it has always 
been a main object with these operators to get the 
Y 2 
