PROCESS OF PRESERVATION. 
273 
The same may be done with the ducks and the waders. 
Nor will this contraction at all affect the subsequent 
process of mounting: if it is desired that the bird 
should be put in an attitude which required the neck to 
be lengthened, this extension can be accomplished with- 
out difficulty ; hut when the neck has been dried in an 
extended position, no art can ever reduce it effectually 
to lesser dimensions. 
(226.) Some few exceptions and general cautions 
may be here mentioned in addition to the foregoing 
instructions. Some birds, particularly the pigeons and 
cuckows, have their skin remarkably thin, and generally 
very fat ; the greatest care must therefore be used in 
detaching it from the flesh, and the operator must be 
very cautious in his efforts to remove the fat, otherwise 
he will repeatedly tear the skin ; the best way for ac- 
complishing the latter object is by gently scraping it 
upwards with a blunt knife, and then applying powdered 
chalk to absorb the oily substance which e.xudes on the 
pressure of the finger. Most of the sea birds will require 
this process, and nearly the whole of the ducks. All 
rasorial birds, and their respective types, have thick 
skins*; in tenuirostral types, on the other hand, the skin 
is generally very thin. It is hardly necessary with the 
humming birds to clean out the inside of the skull, or 
the flesh from the wings and feet ; hut the body and 
neck should always be removed. In warm latitudes, 
where every thing that is dead is liable to be imme. 
diately attacked by ants, the collector should take the 
precaution of washing the bill and legs with a little of 
the arsenic soap ; and only to expose his specimens for 
the purpose of drying, when he, or some one else, can 
look at them every ten or fifteen minutes. The colour 
of the eyes and feet, and the contents of the stomach 
and crop, should be noted down ; and the tongue of each 
species either drawn, described, or preserved. The 
» This is a very rotp.irknl)lc circumstance, and is one of 
tiful of ail those analouies which assimilate the anga/nterf <iw™ruptas as a 
whole, and the Pfle/zj/rfermotes as a type, to the order flaiojcs, and the 
tribe of Scansores, among birds. 
