PAPERS READ. 
ON THE USES OF CLAY AS A FILLING 
MATERIAL. 
BY WILLIAM T. IIOENADAY. 
I desire to call tlie attention of the Society to the extreme 
desirability of using plastic filling materials under certain 
circumstances to he hereinafter illustrated. Experience has 
shown me that, in many cases, when it is necessary to reproduce 
the exact size and shape of the living animars features, line for 
line, and to obtain the exact expression which is desired, it is 
absolutely necessary to use other than hhrons filling materials. 
The almost universal custom of taxidermists in mounting heads 
of inammals is to fill them with chopped tow and no other 
substance. When the skin under treatment is badly shrnnken, 
below its natural size, it must be vigorously stretched in tilling, 
and for this purpose nothing is equal to tow, which, when tight- 
ly packed inside a skin, has a tendency to expand and keep the 
skin stretched to its proper proportions. In such cases as the 
above, no soft plastic material will answer the pui’pose, and tow 
must be used, even though it be at the loss of the more delicate 
points on the animal. 
There are, however, many cases in which clay can not only be 
used to great advantage, hut the use of any elastic fibrous mater- 
ial is a positive mistake. In proof of this assertion 1 will cite 
two examjiles. The head of a fiill-blood bull-dog jiossesses very 
strongly luarked features which must be reproduced with exacti- 
tude or the work is a conspicnons failure. But how, I ask, can all 
the dee[) wrinkles, the pendant flal)by lips, and all those compli- 
cated hollows and elevations of surface be reproduced by using 
tow for filling, the tendency of which is to expand in all direct- 
