536 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 3, 1908. 
at the end of the body has all been divided, pass 
the point of your knife or scalpel from right to 
left under the tail bone and pressing your thumb 
on the tail bone cut upward with the knife to¬ 
ward the thumb, but, of course, slowly and care¬ 
fully so as not to cut yourself. If you happen 
to strike a joint the knife will pass smoothly 
through, otherwise yqu may have to work the 
knife from side to side, but at last it will come 
through. Then, pushing the tail down you will 
see the skin begin to strip very smoothly off the 
lower bones of the back. 
Now it will be well for you to put aside your 
knife for a moment and to work the skin care¬ 
fully down toward the bird’s head on back, sides 
and breast. Do this by pushing and not by pull¬ 
ing. If you pull you will stretch the skin, some¬ 
thing that you wish to avoid. If the skin seems 
to stick anywhere take the handle of your scalpel 
and push the folds of the skin down with this. 
In most birds all this is a very simple opera¬ 
tion, but, of course, if it is performed with ducks, 
loons, grebes or gulls it is likely to be a very 
greasy piece of work and you must use your dry¬ 
ing material freely. From most birds, however, 
the skin strips readily, though in old and tough 
hawks the blade of the knife must sometimes be 
used for cutting, and there are a few birds, such 
for example, as the night hawk and the whippoor¬ 
will, whose skins are so exceedingly tender that 
it is very possible to tear them to pieces. In 
most birds, however, the skin is tough, and the 
tiniest hummingbird will stand a good many hard 
pulls and pushes. 
When the skin has been for the most part 
removed from the body, you will come to the 
wings. These, having been broken, have until 
now been quite out of your way, but now you 
see the jagged ends of the bones sticking up 
through the flesh and perhaps caught on the skin. 
If they are caught, free them, and push the skin 
down outside of them, and as you go on you will 
see on either side, the muscles and tendons run¬ 
ning from the shoulder out to the wings. Cut 
off these as you did the leg muscles, care being 
used not to cut the bird’s skin. After this has 
been done, continue to push the skin along 
the bird’s neck and presently you will see the 
base of the skull appearing. In other words, 
the bird has been skinned and its skin now lies 
on the table before you inside out, attached to 
the body merely by the bird’s neck. 
Two delicate operations now confornt you. 
The taking out of the bird’s ears, and the skin¬ 
ning over the eyes. Work the skin down over 
the skull as. far as you can, and presently you 
will see that it is kept from going further on 
either side by attachments of the skin which 
enter little holes on either side of the hand— 
the ears. In all but the very largest birds you 
can take hold of these attachments with the 
thumb and finger nail close to the bone of the 
skull and can pull them outward and so free 
the skull. This must be done on both sides. 
A little further down you come to the eyes,’ 
and here again the skin seems to stick. Take 
the skin between the thumb and finger nails, and 
close to the skull, and lift the skin upward and 
outward, making small cuts through it close to 
the bone. Before you have got very far you 
will have made an opening in the membrane 
through which the eyeball begins to show. Work 
very carefully here and cut close to the bone for 
fear of cutting the skin about the eyelid. A 
cut there is certain to show. After you have 
gone so far that you can see the eyeball, you will 
readily be able to keep the eyelid out of the 
reach of your knife. Soon you will have passed 
the eye, and then a little push with the handle 
of your scalpel or with your thumb nail will free 
the skin from the bone right to the bill. This 
same operation must be performed on the other 
side. 
The work of skinning is now done. That of 
cleaning the skin comes next. With the handle 
of your scalpel scoop out the bird’s two eyeballs, 
or if you are using your knife introduce the back 
of the blade within the orbit close to the bone 
and scoop out the eye in that way. Be extremely 
careful, however, not to thrust anything into 
the eyeball—not to burst it. It is filled with 
fluid which will give you more or less trouble 
if it is freed. When both eyes have been re¬ 
moved, throw a little bit of your drying material 
into each orbit, and then turning the skull top 
downward on the table with your knife cut off 
a section of the back and lower part of the skull 
to which the neck and the tongue of the bird 
will be attached. A better wav, if you have a 
pair of stout scissors, is to introduce one of the 
points within one of the arms of the lower man¬ 
dible, and make there a cut reaching from the 
roof of the bird’s mouth back well into> the skull, 
repeating this cut inside the other arm of the 
mandible. When you do this the roof of the 
bird’s mouth and the end portion of the skull 
with the tongue and the neck attached will come 
away. 
In either case the bird’s brain is now exposed, 
and this you must scoop out, either with the flat 
handle of your scalpel or with a little flat stick 
which you can easily whittle. 
[to be concluded.] 
Biltmore and Vicinity. 
Raleigh, N. C., Oct. 1 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: One of my recent journeys was over 
the line of a very wonderful new railway from 
the mountain town of Marion to Johnson City, 
Tenn. This road has already cost eighteen mil¬ 
lions of dollars and its grade is only one-half 
of one per cent., compensated, for the entire line. 
The road passes through and over the Blue 
Ridge at the best of all the gaps. In all there 
are twenty tunnels in fourteen miles. In Janu¬ 
ary it will be open from St. Paul, on the Vir- 
ginia-Kentucky line, to Bostic, on the Seaboard 
Air Line, not far from Charlotte, N. C. It is 
to be a coal-carrying road, but will furnish ex¬ 
ceptional opportunities for people to see a very 
noble mountain region never before tapped by 
any road except the rudest sort. In this new 
world the fishermen and possibly the hunter will 
find a field. The streams are very swift and 
clear and the trouting possibilities, with proper 
re-stocking, seem to be great. The road from 
Marion crosses the Catawba River and then 
goes along Honeycutt’s and Peterson’s creeks 
and one of the forks of the Catawba, while on 
the northern side of the mountain it runs for 
fifty miles alongside the Toe River, which on 
the Tennessee border becomes the Nolichucky. 
This river is not quite clear for two-thirds of 
its length, but its branches can be made excel¬ 
lent for trout. There is a trout preserve of a 
good many thousand acres in that section. 
During the tour of the mountain region a look 
was taken at Biltmore forest where the school 
of forestry, of which Dr. Schenck is in charge, 
has- for ten years been doing admirable work. 
This is the most important school of its class 
in this country. The number of students is 
limited to twenty-five and most of them come 
from the North and West, very few Southern 
men taking the course of instruction, though to 
be sure this section needs men with a thorough 
knowledge of forest conservation. It is fostered 
by George Vanderbilt and stands in the midst of 
his 150,000 acres of forest preserve, the finest 
illustration of forest conservation in the South. 
Not a hundred men in North Carolina know 
that this is the most prominent forest school in 
the United States, devoting itself entirely to 
practical forestry work. 
The floods which have occurred in North 
Carolina this year are a powerful plea for the 
Appalachian Forest Reserve and for forest con¬ 
servation generally, for it is felt that the streams 
will be as high again and perhaps higher. The 
great pulp mills, the saw mills and tan bark 
getters are playing havoc with the mountain 
forests, and I found this havoc over wide areas. 
A third section visited is the 70,000 acre 
“boundary” of the “Eastern Band” of the 
Cherokee Indian Nation. There is no game at 
all in the Indian Nation except a few bear high 
up on the sides of the Smoky Mountains, at the 
headwaters of the Oconalufty River. There is 
not a deer to be found, it is said. The absence 
of bird life is wonderful and it is the stillest 
place imaginable. Not a song of a bird is heard 
and certainly during a stay of several days not 
over a dozen birds were seen, these including 
snowbirds, bluebirds, sparrows and a couple of 
sparrowhawks. The Indians simply said the 
game had all been killed out, though up until 
twenty-five years ago it was plentiful. The river 
and also Soco Creek, its largest tributary, were 
until recently notable for brook trout. They 
are clear and cold and they have been fairly 
well stocked with rainbow trout which the In¬ 
dians say destroy the brook trout, though I saw 
some of both species taken from the Oconalufty. 
High up on the latter river there are a great 
many brook trout yet left, and this is no doubt 
true as to Soco Creek. 
It is evident that elk used to be very plentiful 
in these mountains, as so many streams bear 
that name, but it is said the last elk was killed 
about 1808. 
There is no end of game in Mr. Vanderbilt’s 
forest, but shooting is not now permitted; in 
fact, never has been except by himself and a 
few friends, and while trout are very plentiful, 
a permit to fish for them is a difficult thing to 
obtain. Fred. A. Olds. 
Game in New Hampshire. 
Derry, N. H., Sept. 21. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: I do not hear of much game being 
seen here, probably better than last year. We 
had lots of woodcock last year and ought to have 
plenty this fall. It is unusually dry here. We 
had such a season four years ago and we had 
no birds. They cut across our State north and 
follow the Connecticut River south to the Sound, 
then cut across to the southern States; that is 
my version of it. 
I wish we could have a close season on grouse 
for three years and let the partridge shooters 
get on to fox hunting instead. There are lots 
of foxes here. John W. Babbitt. 
