NOTE ON THE VALUE OF ANIMAL ILLUSTRATIONS, ETC. 73 
ever, and which they should possess to meet the requirements of 
the case are : 1, accui’acy of outline ; 2, truthfulness of attitude ; 
and 3, in order of importance, correctness of coloring, and in so 
far as they conform to these things are they already, hy just so 
much, works of art. What is technically known as artistic effect 
should here be a secondary consideration. Having secured the 
first three essential points, attention may be given to the last. 
In the case of rare animals such representations, as is well 
known, are the sole reliance of the taxidermist. That they have 
a value even in the case of more familiar animals may be in- 
stanced by the case of the Walrus. The pictures of this mam- 
mal in all the professed works on zoology and natural history — 
evmn in so good and generally correct a work as Brehm — are 
glaringly false, and it is only within the last few years that any- 
thing approaching truthful representations — figures drawn from 
observation instead of copies of previous drawings originally 
evolved from the artist’s “ inner consciousness ” — have been given 
us, and so it happens that of mounted specimens of the walrus 
showing the true appearance of the animal almost the only ones 
at the present time are the one at Cambridge, and that other at 
the United States National Museum mounted by Mr. Hornaday. 
How often has a painstaking taxidermist wished for a means 
of refreshing his recollection on some little matter of detail con- 
cerning a creature’s anatomy, and been obliged to finally guess 
at it because of the lack of adequate illustrations. Let me not 
be understood as decrying the assistance afforded by zoological 
gardens. It is just here that they come into play, and as it is 
better for the taxidermist to observe at first hand so these are 
even better than drawings for reference ; but the fact is they are 
far from being readily accessible, at least in this country, and in 
the few instances in which this objection does not apply, the va- 
riety of specimens which they contain is too limited, so that we 
are still compelled to supplement them by a more ready source 
of information, and thus we fall back upon pictorial representa- 
tions as on the whole most convenient. As above implied, how- 
ever, these representations must be taken from life by skilful 
hands, and must give us the animals as they look and not as the 
3 ,rtist thinks they ought to look. 
