105 
left a little longer than the neck and body and the posterior end bent into 
a loop which keeps the body filling from slipping out. Sew up the breast 
opening, and arrange the feathers, which will fall into place naturally. 
Major Brooks showed that a properly made skin, with wings fastened, 
scarcely needs wrapping, and tossed a fresh, unwrapped skin into the air 
without having it lose shape and symmetry. For this reason he has gone 
back to the use of the corrugated drying-board, leaving the skin in this 
for a few hours or a day to round the back. If necessary the skin is then 
wrapped very lightly with a little cotton, as he considers that tight 
wrapping causes the bird to lose its fluffy appearance. 
The Snyder Form for Drying Bird Skins. Mr. L. L. Snyder, Curator 
of Birds in the Royal Ontario Museum of Zoology, Toronto, has devised 
a drying form (Snyder, 1935) that combines in a practical way the good 
features of the corrugated drying-board with the advantages of wrapping 
the specimen in cotton. Some of the best features are that the skins are 
not apt to be mussed or disarranged while drying in camp, and the skins 
may be left in the forms and safely packed if it is necessary to move 
camp before the specimens are dry. Another apparently minor feature 
that is important when large collections are being handled is the slight 
flattening of the back, which hinders rolling and sliding of skins in storage 
trays. A beginner can probably acquire the technique of shaping skins 
more rapidly by this method, although it is well to learn the ordinary 
methods for use when the “forms” are not available. In making the forms, 
a graded series of cards, roughly rectangular in shape, with rounded lateral 
wings, were cut from fairly heavy American cardboard. These were in 
ten sizes, for specimens from the size of a wren to that of a crow, but all 
sizes were proportioned the same. Each card was then relaxed somewhat 
in steam and the rectangular central part was immediately pinned or 
otherwise held flat on a board that had been equipped with two parallel 
strips of wood suitably spaced to hold the rounded lateral wings of the 
card vertical. The spacing of these lateral strips was readjusted after the 
making of a number of forms of each size. In a few hours the cards w r ere 
dried out and the lateral wings remained in their vertical position. An 
imaginary section through the centre of each form presents a rather flat- 
bottomed U-shape. All of the forms were shellacked and each size given 
a serial number on the back. A piece of baize cloth was then sized to the 
inner surface and trimmed. The forms were then ready for use. In the 
field when a bird skin is all but complete it is laid with the ventral surface 
downward and the back feathers finally arranged. A thin sheet of cotton 
of approximately the size of the specimen is then carefully laid over the 
back. A form of suitable size is selected and slipped over the skin and 
the whole is then lifted and the ventral surface turned upward. The final 
adjusting of this surface can be done without the form interfering in any 
way. The friction formed by the baize and the sheet of cotton tends to 
prevent the specimen from slipping out of the form when being handled. 
In addition, a few turns of cops thread around the skin and the form 
can be made to secure the specimen if such is necessary as in the case of 
moving camp. A set of these forms telescopes together and a set of six or 
