44 : SOC. OF AM. TAXIDERMISTS, ANNUAL REPORT. 
this valuable adjunct to the survey. During Audubon’s extended 
tour throughout the Western plains he was accompanied by an 
employed artist in taxidermy, whose remarkable faculty for 
detecting the notes of birds served him (often in spite of the 
master’s pooh-poohs) in giving science new and interesting spe- 
cies. The familiar names of the discoverers, in not a few cases, 
remain attached as generic or specific terms to their perpetual 
honor. 
The Smithsonian Institution now became a sort of patron of 
the art on a large scale, both through the publication of direc- 
tions for the preservation of specimens, and by furnishing ways 
and means by which parties going out could successfully explore 
the regions likely to furnish desired material. Artists in taxi- 
dermy were fitted out there for all parts of the world, known 
and unknown — for the Tropics, for the Arctics and for the Ant- 
arctics, for the Atlantic and the Pacific, for the forest and plain, 
and for the deep sea. The vast storehouses of our museums now 
attest advantages accrued therefrom ; and this is the work of a 
few short years. 
We have seen how nearly the art was a mere cypher within 
the early recollection of some of us. The present period now 
recognizes the art as one of great capabilities, and many are the 
workers who strive to see them realized. The excellent work of 
the French artists was early appreciated, and, doubtless, it had 
some infiuence in the development of the genius of our own. 
This foreign work came now to be seen in many of the best col- 
lections. The names of Yerreaux, Yerdey, and others have 
become familiar in connection with most superior art ; and this 
work has, without doubt, served an important stimulus to many 
who, like painters and sculptors of obscure residence, feel the 
want of good models and good schools for their art. There had 
seemed to be, so to speak, a timidity, or possibly a lack of the 
spirit of inquiry and study, for we cannot surely attribute to our 
ar lists of the time any want of capacity. It was a new thing, 
this moulding the skins of quadrupeds and birds and fishes and 
snakes to resemble the life. 
J ust as in every other art, this timidity vanished by degrees, 
especially when one more bold, and possibly a trifie more inven- 
