WARD’S RAT URAL SCIEROE BULLETIR. 
11 
OUR 0STE0L06ICAL DEPARTMENT. 
Possibly some of our readers may have visited 
the Ames Shovel Works, and remember how in 
the long main building a piece of steel enters at 
one end, passes from machine to machine, 
through many varying processes, and finally 
emerges a perfectly finished shovel. So we pro- 
pose to take our readers through our workshops 
and show them how the raw material passes 
through manifold manipulations and comes out 
a finished skeleton. But first let us say that there 
is nothing to show the great labor that has been 
performed in bringing the material to our doors 
before any save the simplest kind of work has 
been expended on it. Few can realize, unless 
th'ey have tried the experiment, the amount of 
time, trouble and correspondence involved in ob- 
taining animals that are comparatively common. 
Let an animal once find out that he is wanted, 
and he immediately becomes rare, and acquires 
a habit of appearing only in out of the way 
places where it is expensive to capture him, and 
whence he cannot be brought without the pay- 
ment of heavy freight bills. 
But we will suppose that these various diffi- 
culties have been overcome, and that by land 
and water a number of shipments have arrived 
at their destination. The zoological provinces 
find themselves sadly mixed up, and species 
usually deemed far apart see themselves in close 
relationship, oftentimes much closer than some of 
them would consent to were they alive. An 
Orang from Borneo reposes near an Alligator 
from Florida, while an Alaskan seal makes the 
acquaintance of an Australian Dugong, and some 
unlucky importer forwards in the same box a 
Monkey and a Python. Naturally the first 
thing is to give to each one a habitation 
and a name, and this is not always an easy 
matter. Specimens come in with their own 
name, no names, or, worse yet, those that prop- 
erly belong to an entirely different animal. Some 
are easily identified, others yield their names 
after a determined struggle, and still others are 
set aside labelled with a ? The small 
skeletons, after a bath in arsenic water, are con- 
signed to the Rough Skeleton Room, where, 
grouped together as. systematically as the nature 
of the case allows, they hang from the ceiling, 
crowd the sides, and lie stored in boxes on the 
floor. The large ones — and it is these whose 
fortunes we shall mainly follow — are placed in 
maceration, where in malodorous kegs and bar- 
rels they pass from six months to a year, and 
even more, before they are fit to be cleaned and 
bleached. Here, as before labelling, animals are 
grouped in anything but zoological order, 
for the amount of room as compared with 
the number of skeletons is small. Although 140 
casks are employed, to say nothing of three huge 
tanks built for the especial accommodation of 
whales, it is necessary to place several pieces in 
one receptacle, and in there the lion and the 
lamb often lie down together. 
Upon the proper maceration and cleaning 
of a skeleton depends the appearance of 
the finished work, and, unfortunately, these 
are processes that cannot be hurried, careful ex- 
periment having convinced us that anything 
which bleaches a skeleton rapidly is sure to in- 
jure the texture of the bone. Hence chloride of 
lime is rarely used, and then but little, and de- 
pendence is placed on long and careful soaking. 
On the roof of the long shed used for macerat- 
ing purposes are the bleaching racks which dur- 
ing the summer are more or less completely cov 
ered with slowdy whitening bones, these being 
turned from time to time in order to expose all 
sides equally to the light. Curiously enough, it 
is not the bones that look the whitest in the bar- 
rels which turn out the best, skeletons of an 
almost inky blackness often being those that 
bleach the most readily. Once fairly white, the 
bones are transferred to the upper story of the 
osteological shop, where they await their final 
sorting, an operation involving much care and 
not a little knowledge of anatomy. In fact, the 
worst kind of a Chinese puzzle is a simple mat- 
ter in comparison with a tray containing three 
or four skeletons whose numerous bones must be 
separated one from another. Occasionally, too, 
such a disturbing element as a rifle ball adds a 
few extra pieces. Having been separated, each 
skeleton is placed in a bag by itself and labelled 
with a tag giving not only the name and num- 
ber, but also the number of the barrel in which 
it was macerated. 
With the exception of a single small room, the 
entire upper story of one large building is de- 
voted to the storage of cleaned skeletons, and 
even then we are cramped for space. In one 
room the shelves are crowded with serried lines 
of skulls, another contains such specimens as 
are gx-easy and must be specially treated, while 
a third is devoted to odd limbs, and other por- 
tions of skeletons that are destined some day to 
be grouped together in series. In the main room 
— there are five in all— one side is given up to 
large, disarticulated skeletons, another to the 
smaller ones whose bones are left united by their 
natural ligaments, and a third to skulls which 
belong to skeletons, but are too large to be kept 
with them. Originally a portion of this one ap- 
partment sufficed for all, but as the enterprise 
grew, first one room, then another was annexed, 
until no more were left. The well filled tiers of 
shelves are strikingly suggestive of the Roman 
Catacombs; but with this great difference. The 
contents of the Roman Catacombs never change, 
but in ours change is ever going on, for skeletons 
are constantly being removed, while others come 
to take their places. Once bagged, a skeleton rests 
tranquilly until needed for mounting, when it is 
taken to one of the w’oik-rooms on the low T er 
floor, very likely to the one depicted in our en- 
graving. All this cataloguing, macerating, 
bleaching and assorting are merely preparatory 
to the mounting, and there are few who bear this 
sufficiently in mind wdien considering the cost 
of a finished piece. But the xuounting is the 
most interesting part of the work to look at, and 
the one which attracts the most attention. The 
first step in mounting is to place by itself each 
set of bones, the vertebral column, ribs, and 
bones of each leg being laid out in their proper 
order to be wired in turn. Then any breakages 
are repaired or any missing parts supplied, for it 
sometimes happens that a skeleton— like any 
other traveler— arrives from a long journey with 
some part lacking. Collectors are not always as 
careful as they might be, either in saving all 
bones or in packing them in strong, tight boxes, 
and thus it sometimes happens that spite of all pre- 
cautions a hungry rat breaks in and steals. In 
case such loss has occurred, recourse is had to 
the brie a brae room whose shelves instead of 
being adorned by articles of vertu are furnished 
with all manner of odd bones saved from skins 
and damaged skeletons, and reserved for just 
such occasions. All injuries being made good, the 
vertebrae are strung, ribs attached, sternum fas- 
tened in place, and finally the legs secured in 
their proper positions. All of which is far easier 
to read about than to perform. It is a common 
remark that it must be difficult to tell where 
each bone belongs, and while this is true enough 
hardly anyone says a word about the equal dif- 
ficulty of fixing it in place, or thinks that it is 
one to two week’s work to properly mount a 
good sized skeleton. 
Had Mrs. Walker passed a few weeks in our 
work-rooms she might have added a few more 
pages to her essay on “The Total Depravity of 
Inanimate Things.” She could have told how 
wires stubbornly refuse to pass through holes 
made with a drill two sizes larger, how drills 
break in the bone or come through in the wrong 
place, or how just as the final twist is being 
given to a wire, it snaps, and all the work has to 
be done anew. In some cases there is a consid- 
erable amount of hard labor connected with the 
mounting of a skeleton, and such pieces as an 
Elephant, or more yet, a Whale, call for a cer- 
