78 
Seals and Walruses 
Seals have the skin lined with a coat of soft, greasy blubber, and are 
most readily skinned by cutting a deep gash along the under surface, clear 
through skin and blubber, and dissecting and rolling the carcass out of the 
skin. If the skin is to be mounted, it is well not to bring the opening cut 
farther forward than the breast and to make lateral cuts to each flipper. 
The blubber may be cut away in a mass with a curved knife as in the case 
of a bear skin. By holding the skin taut with one hand, one may usually 
avoid cutting the skin — with practice. If any seal-hunting natives are 
around, it will usually be cheaper and easier to have this rough cleaning 
done by a professional, although the finer points of the head and flippers 
had better be done by the collector himself. Bearded seals and sea-lions 
should have the lips carefully skinned and thinned down around the roots 
of the “whiskers'’ so that the salt can strike in; otherwise the bristles 
are apt to slip out. 
The ordinary method of preserving seal skins has been by salting, but 
as it has been found that brine changes the colour of hair seals very much, 
the skins should be dry-cured if possible, or at any rate, partly dried, and 
the salt kept on the flesh side away from the hair {See page 74). 
Walrus skins are preferably thinned down at once with the curved 
skinning-knife, to not more than one-fourth of the original thickness, and 
the skins salted in bulk. Dead seals and walruses designed for scientific 
specimens should not be exposed to sunshine for any length of time before 
skinning, as the cuticle will blister in a remarkably short time. 
Beaver 
The beaver is handled as an open skin, with opening cut along the 
median line extending to near the tip of the tail on the lower side. The 
broad, flat, scaly tail presents no particular difficulties, but care should be 
taken not to cut gashes through the skin as there is no hairy covering to 
conceal stitches. The feet are skinned down to the toe-nails and the webs 
between the toes split or separated in the process. To do this, it is 
necessary to split the sole of the foot from a point near the junction of the 
middle toe to the centre of the heel in the hind foot, and to a short distance 
beyond the wrist in the fore limbs. As the skin is rather heavy and fatty, 
it is rather hard to dry properly without undue stretching, and is best dry- 
salted and later tanned in the laboratory. 
Muskrat 
The muskrat is skinned and made up like an ordinary small mammal. 
The only abnormal feature is the tail, which is long, scaly, sparsely haired, 
and laterally constricted, so that its height is much greater than its width. 
The tail must be split on the under side nearly or quite to the end in 
skinning. To get a thin tail filler the best method is to whittle a tail of 
soft wood (preferably white cedar) to the same size and shape as the 
skinned tail, and long enough to extend about halfway through the body. 
The same high, narrow effect may be obtained by wrapping two wires 
tightly with cotton and then wrapping the two together with fine fibre 
cotton. The latter method is used in mounting a muskrat if the tail has 
to be bent. 
