Part 14 (1/2)

Having done this and surveyed the scene, you will observe that the form of the animal is very faulty, and the skin not nearly full enough. Something more must be done.

Unless the specimen is a seal, or something else with short, close hair, part the hair carefully and make a long, perpendicular slit in the skin behind each foreleg and in each flank, as shown in Plate III., I-I, and K-K. Through these openings you can introduce your metal filling tools, and also filling materials _ad libitum_, and give the interior a complete overhauling. You can easily push your iron filler through the straw, and raise the line of the back, shoulders, or hind-quarters, and lower the line of the breast and abdomen until both are right. Then, fill with more straw, or tow, if you like now. Through these holes you command the entire body of the animal at every point, and now you must work out your own salvation. When all is finished and the body is quite full and solid, sew up the openings carefully, and unite the hair over them so that they will be hidden. If you are careless in filling, and pull out a lot of hair around each of the openings, so much the worse for you.

For full instructions in regard to work on heads, see a special chapter.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 30.--Fillers of Various Kinds, One-sixth Actual Size.

_a_, Filler of hard wood, 3 ft. long (another should be 2 ft. long); _b_, filler of steel, 5/16 inch x 3 ft. for long reaches in large mammals; _c_, filler of iron, 3/8 inch x 2-1/2 ft., for heavy work (another should be 18 in. long); _d_, filler of bra.s.s, or galvanized iron wire, No. 5, for light work (another should be still smaller, for very fine work).]

_Cutting out Pieces of Skin._--It not infrequently happens that in mounting an old skin it will be found to have been unduly stretched in drying, and in spite of one's best efforts there will be too much skin in a flank, or behind a shoulder, or that the body itself will be entirely too large. In such cases, when the animal is clothed with hair which can be made to hide the seams, it is necessary and permissible to cut a long slit in the skin where the looseness occurs, and cut out a strip so that when the edges are brought together the wrinkle no longer exists. Usually such cuts are made in the shape of a triangle running out to a very fine point, so that when the incision is sewn up the entire adjacent surface will be quite smooth.

When a taxidermist has a fresh skin, or one which has been but recently prepared dry, it is very seldom that any skin-cutting is necessary. With a good elastic skin there are ways of working away from any part a superabundance of skin, or forcing the skin on parts adjacent to the wrinkles to contract sufficiently to cause their disappearance.

On close-haired animals, wrinkles must be worked away, which can in a majority of cases be accomplished by hard, persevering work with the filler. With long-haired animals which have no stripes or spots, and on which the hair can be made to hide all seams, it is best to cut out triangular strips of skin. In the latter case it saves much time and hard labor. It certainly gives a better specimen, and if such tricks leave no visible trace upon the animal, where is the harm? I care not if a skin be slit in twenty places so long as the cuts are tightly sewn up, _and are invisible to the eye of the observer_.

Bird skins must never be cut in this way, for to the ornithologist who diligently studies every specimen, the presence of every feather and every bare spot naturally belonging to the bird is of importance. Do not forget this caution, unless you wish to call down upon your head the just wrath of the ornithologist. Neither is it possible to do any skin-cutting upon reptiles, for there is no natural covering to hide seams, and to cut out any scales is to mutilate a specimen.

SECTION II. MOUNTING LONG-HAIRED MAMMALS OF LARGE SIZE, FOR WHICH THE MANIKIN IS UNNECESSARY.--_Examples: Musk ox, bears (except large polars and grizzlies), yak, Bactrian camel in winter coat, llamas and their allies; also old, dry s.h.i.+ns generally, which require forcible stretching._

While the manikin process is the one _par excellence_ for the great majority of large quadrupeds, it is also, until you get perfectly familiar with it, the longest. There are various large animals whose long, thick, and matted hair so completely hides the surface of the wearer that a shorter method of mounting can be followed with very satisfactory results.

This is simply stuffing with straw in the same manner as described in detail in the previous section, with but one exception--the manner of attaching the leg irons to the central beam of the body.

The leg irons are cut and fitted to the leg bones precisely as shown in Plate VII. But the legs are made with the skin attached at the foot, the skin is drawn over, fitted and sewn up, and each leg is completely finished while the skin lies in a heap upon the table. For a large animal this takes some time, and as fast as the legs are finished each must be carefully wrapped up in ice blankets that have been wet in salt-and-alum water, and kept soft until all are done. Oil the threads on the rods, to keep them from rusting.

The next step is to procure the centre board, which should be about one-third as wide, from top to bottom as the depth of the animal's body. In the ill.u.s.tration showing the manikin of a tiger (Plate VII.) the body board is wider than is desirable for the same animal were the body to be filled with straw. If the board is too wide, it is impossible to get around it with the fillers, and work through the specimen from one side to the other.

To put the members of the body together, lay the skin upon the floor on its back, in the same general shape as shown in Plate VI. Put the body board in place and mark the points where the ends of the leg irons strike it. Now for the iron squares.

The old and antiquated way to fasten leg irons to a centre board consisted in leaving a long end projecting, bending it like the letter U, and stapling it to the board. That was always a poor way, and in the light of a perfect arrangement it now seems poorer than ever.

When Mr. John Martens came over from Hamburg to work as a mammal taxidermist in Professor H.A. Ward's great Natural Science Establishment, at Rochester, N.Y., the most valuable luggage he brought with him was the idea of the iron square for attaching leg irons to a centre board. For that particular purpose it would be hard to devise a more perfect arrangement, and I shall be at some pains to describe it.

It requires four irons to fasten the legs to the centre board, one for each leg, and to make a set for an animal the size of a large mountain sheep ram, proceed as follows:

Procure four pieces of flat bar iron, 1/4 of an inch thick, 1-1/4 or 1-1/2 inch wide, and 9 inches long. At a point 3-1/2 inches from one end, bend each iron at a perfect right angle, which, of course, can only be done by heating it. Now heat the short arm red hot, clamp the end of it in a vise, and make a twist of exactly a quarter of a turn in the short arm, as close up to the angle as you can. This will make the end of the short arm stand out in a horizontal plane against the side of the body board.

At the end of the short arm, with its centre exactly 3 inches from the inner face of the long arm, drill or punch a hole of the right size to receive the threaded end of the leg iron, but no larger. (For our _Ovis montana_ ram it should be half an inch in diameter.) File off the sharp corners of this end.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 31.--An Iron Square.]

At a point about 1-1/4 inch from the inner angle of the square, and in the long arm, drill a hole about 7/16 or 1/2 an inch in diameter, for a stout bolt to pa.s.s through. Between that and the end of the long arm, drill (or punch) two screw-holes, and countersink them. That is all there is to the making of the square, and the accompanying cut (Fig. 31) accurately represents it. Each pair of squares is put on with a single square-headed bolt, the length of which varies according to the thickness of the body board. For our mountain ram, the bolts should be 3/8 of an inch in diameter, and about 2-1/2 inches long.

It is useless and unnecessary for me to attempt to describe the different sizes of squares necessary for animals of various sizes, for circ.u.mstances must be the instructor in that. I will remark, however, that for a large bison or moose, where the finished specimen will weigh perhaps 600 or 700 pounds, and the strain on the irons is very considerable, I have found it necessary to make squares of flat iron 3/8 or 7/16 of an inch thick by 1-3/4 inch wide.

_Caution.--Do not make, the short, or outer arm, too long._ If too long, and the hole once drilled, you will hardly be able to make it shorter; but if too short, it can easily be made longer by putting a piece of board between the long arm of the square and the body board. The length of the outer arm of the squares for the hind legs is gauged by the width of the pelvis. The measurement to be taken is the distance between the centres of the two femora when both are in their natural positions in the skeleton, and with this distance once ascertained it is easy to deduct the thickness of the centre board, and calculate how long each outer arm shall be. The distance between the heads of the two humeri is practically the same as the distance between the femora.

In making the hind leg, the iron should be no longer at the upper end than the end of the femur, and once this is determined the upper end of the femur must be cut off with a saw, to give room for the squares and two nuts. The end of the iron for the front leg may project three inches or so above the head of the humerus, and be bent slightly backward; to point upward in the same direction as the scapula.