THE SCOPE AND NEEDS OF TAXIDERMY. 
55 
living animals ; but it is becoming more and more apparent that 
his skill is capable of producing a great amount of highly orna- 
mental work, which, while not taxidermy in the strictest accepta- 
tion of the word, cannot be successfully undertaken by any one 
but a taxidermist. 
At the outset I had occasion to meet the objections of those 
who deny that taxidermy is an art, but only too often I fear that 
their allegations^are true, for many a specimen is mounted in such 
manner as to present no claim to any art, except 'in the broadest 
meaning of the word — that it is not nature. This lack of artis- 
tic qualities in our work is largely owing to the newness of taxi- 
dermy — a newness which tells against us in many ways. All arts 
in their inception are barren of attractive features, and it is not 
to be expected that ours is to be an exception to the rule, the 
more that taxidermists have generally taken great pains to keep 
their methods and experience carefully concealed, for fear that 
some one might profit by their ideas. So instead of having a 
good foundation of accumulated facts to build upon, and being 
carefully instructed at the very outset to avoid errors and profit 
by the results obtained by his predecessors, every beginner has 
had to commence anew, and from this state of affairs has resulted 
a remarkable uniformity in doing poor work. Eight here is 
where the painter and sculptor have a vast advantage over us, for 
the}'^ have at their disposal a vast fund of accumulated knowledge 
and experience. Theoretically, if all study nature, all will come 
out aright, but a practical difficulty lies in the fact that the eye 
needs educating as much as any other portion of the body ; other- 
wise it will not see things as they are. No one can draw well 
until the eye has been taught to see correctly and the hand trained 
to record what the eye sees ; neither can the form of an animal 
be properly seen and reproduced by the taxidermist without this 
same training. Now, owing to the exclusiveness of the craft, 
the majority of taxidermists are without any training whatever, 
and not only are they not taught to distinguish between the good 
and the bad and to acquire a knowledge of form, but many are 
even ignorant of the simplest mechanical methods necessaiy for 
the accomplishment of certain results. There are taxidermists, 
and good ones too, who do not understand how to properly clean 
