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WILLIAMSON: JOHN WILLIAMSON. 
was made with the late Mr. Arthur Strickland, who then resided near 
Burling-ton, and who had made a respectable collection of British 
birds. The whole of his cases were transferred, for a brief period, 
to the new museum ; meanwhile, every nerve was strained to form 
collections of our own. At that period the art of taxidermy was in 
a low state. The only man in the kingdom who had any reputation 
for skill as a stuffer of birds, was Mr. Timothy Harrop, then the 
curator of the museum of the Natural History Society, at Manchester. 
My father's first work was to proceed to Manchester, where he 
spent some weeks in receiving practical instructions from Harrop, 
in skinning and mounting birds and animals. The winter succeeding 
this journey was a very severe one, and rare birds of various kinds 
were unusally abundant. The keepers of Sir John Johnstone, Sir 
Charles Legard, and other neighbouring land-holders, received 
instructions to give all assistance in their power in making additions 
to the Ornithological collection ; hence it not unfrequently happened 
that as many as eight or ten birds had to be skinned in a day. The 
greater proportion of this skinning fell to my lot, my father 
completing the more difficult work of stuffing and mounting the 
objects. When spring returned, and the summer birds of passage 
began to surround us, much of our time was spent gun in hand, the 
result being', that in about a year, when Mr. Strickland's birds were 
removed, a very respectable collection was ready to take their place. 
The next gap to be supplied was an Entomological one. No 
collection of insects then existed in Scarborough, but every opportunity 
was embraced of scouring the country, for miles around, in search of 
tiny game. Every evening, when the weather permitted, found us, net 
in hand, at certain favourable localities collecting the night-flying 
Lepidoptera. The carcases of the birds we had skinned, were 
deposited in the surrounding plantations, as traps for the Necrophagous 
Coleoptera, which traps were inspected daily ; and at the same time 
a series of breeding cages were established, in which Larvae 
were fed and reared, until they matured in perfect forms of 
Lepidopterous life. Beating the woods for larvae, with a huge sheet 
spread under every tempting branch of Oak, Hawthorn, or Birch 
ransacking the Poplar plantations for the caterpillars of the 
