380 
MUSEUMS. 
and this will facilitate the carriage. When dividing 
it, the operator must take care to hold his knife so 
as to humour the angle which the fur forms with 
the skin. Thus, were I to cut a preserved skin in 
two parts, the blade of my knife would point to the 
head, and the haft the tail of the animal. By- 
attention to this, not a hair of the fur will be cut 
during the operation. 
I will just add here (although it be a digression), 
that there is no difficulty in making the legs and 
feet of eagles, turkeys, and other large birds, retain 
their natural size. You may go through every 
known museum, and you will find that the legs of 
these, and of all large birds, are dried and shrivelled, 
as though they belonged to the mummies of ancient 
days. In order to give the legs of birds a natural 
appearance, and a natural size, the skin, from the 
very claws to the top of the leg, must be separated 
from the bone by running a working-iron betwixt 
it and the bone, and then modelling the skin w^ith 
the working-iron. 
The wattles of fowls, the caruncles of turkeys, 
and the combs of cocks, by the simple process of 
internal modelling, may be made to retain their 
natural size. 
I have now given an outline of the mode of pre- 
serving quadrupeds upon scientific principles. Here, 
then, I stop ; for I can go on no farther. 1 can no 
more explain, by the agency of my pen, how to 
make the thousand and one little touches which are 
necessary to insure success, than a fiddler can con- 
vey instructions by letter to one who has never 
