ON PRESERVING BIRDS. 
295 
In the act of skinning a bird, you must either 
have it upon a table, or upon your knee. Probably, 
you will prefer your knee ; because when you cross 
one knee over the other, and have the bird upon the 
uppermost, you can raise it to your eye, or lower it, 
at pleasure, by means of the foot on the ground, and 
then your knee will always move in unison with your 
body, by which much stooping will be avoided and 
lassitude prevented. 
With these precautionary hints in mind, we will 
now proceed to dissect a bird. Suppose we take a 
hawk. The little birds will thank us, with a song 
for his death, for he has oppressed them sorely ; and 
in size he is just the thing. His skin is also pretty 
tough, and the feathers adhere to it. 
We will put close by us a little bottle of the solu¬ 
tion of corrosive sublimate in alcohol; also a stick 
like a common knitting needle, and a handful or 
two of cotton. Now fill the mouth and nostrils of 
the bird with cotton, and place it upon your knee on 
its back, with its head pointing to your left shoulder. 
Take hold of the knife with your two first fingers 
and thumb, the edge upwards. You must not keep 
the point of the knife perpendicular to the body of 
the bird; because, were you to hold it so, you would 
cut the inner skin of the belly, and thus let the 
bowels out. To avoid this, let your knife be parallel 
to the body, and then you will divide the outer skin 
with o^reat ease. 
Begin on the belly below the breast-bone, and cut 
down the middle, quite to the vent. This done, put 
Preserving 
Birds. 
Act of 
skinning 
the bird. 
