Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting Part 18

In old lions and tigers the face wrinkles pretty much all over, especially across the nose and under the eyes. In all the _Felidae_ the opening of the eye changes most strikingly. When angry, the eye of a ruminant animal opens its widest, and shows portions of the eyeball that are never seen otherwise. In the carnivora, the reverse is the case. As if to protect the eye from being clawed or bitten, the upper eyelid is drawn well down over the ball, as seen in Plate I. (Frontispiece), and the eyebrows are bunched up and drawn near together until the scowl becomes frightful. The decks are further cleared for action in the disposition of the ears. Instead of leaving them up ready to be bitten off, they are "uns.h.i.+pped," and laid back as far as possible, close down upon the neck, and out of harm's way. The tongue also pulls itself together, contracts in the middle, curves up at the edges, and makes ready to retire farther back between the jaws at the instant of seizure.

All this time the body is not by any means standing idly and peacefully at ease. The att.i.tude must match the expression of the face, or the tragedy becomes a farce. The body must stand firmly on its legs, alert, ready either to attack or defend, head turned, body slightly bent, or slightly crouching, and, unless the animal is _walking_, with the tail switching nervously from side to side. If the animal is walking forward, the tail should be held still and in the same vertical plane as the body. The finest att.i.tude for a large carnivore is one which represents it at bay, and awaiting attack. A cat is an animal of a thousand att.i.tudes. Very many of them, if reproduced exactly in a mounted specimen, would look very uncouth and devoid of beauty; therefore, choose those which are at once characteristic and pleasing to the eye.

MODELING AN OPEN MOUTH.--In mounting a feline animal with mouth open and teeth showing, beware what you do, or you will make the animal laughing instead of snarling. This is often done! In fact, in my younger days I did it once myself--but without any extra charge.

In modeling an open mouth, first fill the inside of the lips with clay, and also back them up underneath with clay until the lips, when fixed in position, have the expression desired. The inner edge of the hairless portion of the lower lip should fit up close against the jaw bone, and perhaps be tacked down upon it temporarily. Very often it is necessary to hold the lips in position, while drying, by sewing through the edges and pa.s.sing the thread across the jaws from side to side. The skin of the nose must be fully backed up with clay, so that no hollows are left into which the skin can shrink away in drying. It is often desirable to hold the end of the lower lip up to its place, while drying, by driving a small wire nail through it into the bone.

Do not fill the mouth full of clay, for it must be borne in mind that the final modeling of the soft parts of the mouth must be done in papier-mache.

It is no small task to dig out of a mouth a quant.i.ty of clay and tow after it has become hard; therefore, leave a place for the tongue.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Modeling Tools of Wood.]

A head must be thoroughly dry and shrunken before the mouth can be finished and made permanent. In drying, the lips draw away from the gums somewhat, which is just as it should be. The first step is to clear away the dry clay from around the teeth and lips, and get everything clean and ready for the mache. Then make some fine papier-mache, as described elsewhere, that is sticky enough to adhere firmly to smooth bone, and of such consistency that it works well in modeling. With this, and your modeling spatulas and other tools of steel, zinc, or hard wood (see Figs. 39-44), cover the jaw bones to replace the fleshy gums, and fill up to the edges of the lips so that they seem to be attached to the gums as in life. Coat the roof of the mouth, and model its surface into the same peculiar corrugations that you saw in the mouth immediately after death.

This is slow work. It requires a good eye, a skilful, artistic touch, and unlimited patience. If you are an artist, prove it now by the fidelity with which you copy nature in this really difficult work.

In modeling the surface of papier-mache, you must have a clean, well-polished modeling-tool, like Fig. 42, and by wetting it now and then so that it will slip over the surface, your work can be made very smooth.

Next comes the tongue. The only perfect tongue for a feline animal is a _natural_ tongue, skinned, and stuffed with clay. The papillae on the tongue of a lion, tiger, leopard, or puma simply defy imitation, and after many experiments with many different animals I found that with the real tongue, and with that only, one can reproduce nature itself and defy criticism. Of course, this is possible only when you have the animal in the flesh, and can cut out the tongue and preserve it in alcohol until you are ready to mount it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Modeling Tools of Steel.]

To prepare a tiger's tongue, for example, first preserve the whole tongue in alcohol, for safe keeping. When ready to proceed, slit it open lengthwise underneath, and skin it carefully. Take a piece of sheet lead, cut it and hammer it into the right size and shape, and fit it in the mouth as nearly as possible in the shape the finished tongue is to have. By judicious hammering with the round end of a machinist's hammer you can give it any shape you desire. When it is just right, cover it with clay to replace the flesh of the tongue, treat the skin with a.r.s.enical soap, put it over, and sew it up. Now fit the tongue into the mouth, and by pressure with the fingers change its shape wherever necessary in order to make it fit exactly as you wish to have it. When finished, lay it aside to dry. The accompanying figures were drawn from the finished tongue of the tiger represented in Plate I., where it is seen in place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 45.--Side View of Tiger's Tongue.]

When the tongue is dry it must be painted with oil colors, using a little turpentine so that the surface shall not be too glossy, nor have a varnished look. Vermilion and white are the best colors to use, and above all do not make the tongue or lips look like pink candy, or red flannel, or red sealing-wax. Call up the household cat at an early stage of the proceedings, and use her mouth as a model, whether she will or no. A patient old tabby is an invaluable ally in the mounting of feline animals of all sorts, and Towser will also help you out with your _Canidae_. When modeling the mouth or muscles of a gorilla or orang utan, catch the first amateur taxidermist you can lay your hands on--the wilder and greener the better--and use him as your model. Study him, for he is fearfully and wonderfully made. The way some of my good-natured colleagues used to pose for me as (partly) nude models at Ward's, when I once had a ten-months'

siege with orangs, gorillas, and chimpanzees, was a constant source of wonder and delight to the ribald crew of osteologists who knew nothing of high art.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 46.--End View.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 47.--Tiger's Tongue, Top View.]

Fortunately the tongues of most large mammals are smooth, and are easily reproduced by using the same leaden core as described above, and covering it first with papier-mache, drying it, and coating with tinted wax, laid on hot with a small flat paint-brush called a "fitch." With small specimens it is not necessary to make the tongue as a separate piece, or put a leaden core in it. Fill into the mouth a sufficient quant.i.ty of papier-mache, pack it down, and then proceed to model the surface of it into a tongue, shaped to suit the subject. Such a tongue is, of course, a fixture in the mouth.

_Cleaning Teeth._--Before finis.h.i.+ng a mouth with wax, the teeth must be washed clean with a stiff brush. If they will not come out white enough to suit you, wash them with a solution of two parts muriatic acid and one part water, applied with a tooth-brush if possible. Let it stay on the teeth about a quarter of a minute, when it must be washed off with an abundance of clear water. If the acid stays on too long, it will destroy the entire outer surface (enamel) of the teeth.

_Waxing a Mouth._--Of course it will answer, and sometimes quite well enough, perhaps, when a mouth has been handsomely and smoothly modeled in fine papier-mache, to sand-paper it and paint it over when dry with two or three coats of oil color. You can hardly do otherwise, in fact, when you are not prepared to work with wax. But the really fine way, however, is to coat your dry papier-mache with tinted wax as follows:

Procure from the nearest dealer in artists' materials some cakes of white wax. You must also have a small oil or gas stove, or a spirit-lamp, and rig above it a wire frame on which you can set your wax cup. The wax cups should be small, and made of pressed tin, so that they contain no soldered joints. The wax is to be applied hot, or at least quite warm, for bear in mind that if you heat your wax too hot it changes its color quite perceptibly, and makes it dark and yellow. Wax should _always_ be clear and transparent, and when the excess of heat turns it yellow, throw it away.

Regulate the heat carefully, so as to make it gentle. Melt a small portion of a cake of wax in one of your clean tin cups, and if it is the tongue, roof of the mouth or gums, that you have to cover, color the wax a delicate flesh tint by putting into it a very little vermilion, or other suitable color, from your Windsor & Newton oil-color tube. Oil colors mix very well with hot wax; but in using it, it is necessary to keep the wax well stirred with the brush, or the color will settle to the bottom.

Take a clean, dry bristle brush, of the right size (the flat brushes are always best for wax), with a good, compact point, dip it into the hot wax, stir from the bottom, and then, before the wax on your brush has even two seconds in which to get cool, apply it to the surface to be covered, with a quick, dextrous touch, sweeping it on broadly to keep it from piling up and making the surface rough. This wax business requires genuine skill, and, after beginning, one must not be discouraged because it does not "go right"

at first, but try, try again. After your hand has acquired the trick, the beauty of the results will amply repay your labor.

It is very difficult to change the surface of a coat of wax after it is once on; therefore try to get it right with the brush. Of course, if the color or surface does not suit you, sc.r.a.pe it all off, and "to 't again."

To treat the roof of the mouth, the specimen must be turned upside down. At the point where the black lip joins the pink gums, the two colors can be nicely blended by letting the last layers of pink wax lap over a trifle, upon the black, so that the latter will show through the former here and there, and give the line of demarcation a mottled appearance, with the two colors thus blended together. Much can be done by taking advantage of the transparency of thin layers of wax when its color is light.

After the wax has cooled, something can be done to smooth the surface, and give it a very s.h.i.+ny appearance, by carefully sc.r.a.ping the surface over smoothly with the edge of a knife, or a sharp bone-sc.r.a.per. The latter tool will be found of great value in modeling a mouth in papier-mache, and also in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g up the wax after it has been applied.

_Cleaning Gla.s.s Eyes._--Always have the gla.s.s eyes of a finished specimen faultlessly clean and well-polished, to give the brilliancy of life. If paint gets on the gla.s.s, remove it with a drop of turpentine, and polish afterward with a bit of cotton cloth. Some of the old-fas.h.i.+oned taxidermists have the habit of smearing a lot of nasty lamp-black in the eyes of every mounted mammal, for what purpose no one knows--but possibly in imitation of actresses, some of whom have the same unaccountable trick, and a hideous one it is in its results, in both cases. There is only one point in its favor--it is the easiest way in the world to give an animal a black eye.

CHAPTER XXI.

RELAXING DRY SKINS OF BIRDS.

As usual with most processes in taxidermy, there are several ways in which a dry bird skin may be softened, and made ready to mount or make over. I will first describe the one I consider the best in all respects.

TREATMENT OF SMALL SKINS.--Open the skin and remove the filling from the body, neck, and head. Tear some old cotton cloth into strips from one to two inches wide, wet them in warm water and wrap one around each leg and foot until it is completely covered with several thicknesses of the wet cloth. Lift up the wing and put two or three thicknesses of wet cloth, or else thoroughly wet cotton batting, around the carpal joints, and also between the wing and the body. Put some more wet cotton, or rags, inside the skin, in the body and neck, wrap the whole specimen completely in several thicknesses of wet cloth, so as to exclude the air, and lay it aside. If the skin is no larger than a robin, in about twelve to fourteen hours it will be soft enough to mount. The sc.r.a.ping and cleaning will be considered later.

TREATMENT OF LARGE SKINS.--Under this heading it is necessary to place nearly all birds above the size of a robin, for the reason that the legs and feet, being large and thick in comparison with the skin of the body, require special treatment in advance. The legs and wings of some birds require several days' soaking, and were the thin skin of the body to be relaxed for the same length of time, it would macerate, and the feathers would fall off. The legs and wings of large birds must, therefore, be started first in the relaxing process.

Let us take, for example, the skin of a ruffed grouse (_Bonasa umbellus_).

If the skin is an old one, cover the toe-nails and beak with hot wax, or else by much soaking the h.o.r.n.y sheaths will flake off. Wrap the feet and legs with wet cloths, as described above, and let the skin lie without any other wrapping for one day. By the end of that time the joints can be bent somewhat, and they should be manipulated until they bend easily. When they will do this, put wet cloths around the joints of the wings, under the wings, inside of the body and the neck, and wrap the whole skin in a wet cloth of the proper size. By the end of the second day the entire skin will be soft and pliable, and smelling like an African shanty--damp and musty.

Of course the larger the skin the longer it will take to completely relax.

Sometimes the wings of very large birds require soaking half as long as the legs, but care must be exercised not to soak any feathered parts too long, or the feathers are liable to fall out and cause trouble. By this process skins may be softened and made ready to mount, according to their size, as follows: Wren to robin, in twelve to fourteen hours; ruffed grouse, two days; great blue heron, three days; bald eagle, four days; condor, five days; ostrich, six to seven days. Skins which are less than one year old soften in about half the time they would require if five years old, and if properly made in the first place, will make as handsome mounted specimens as would fresh skins.

WET SAND.--Some taxidermists soften dry bird skins by burying them in wet sand after the legs and wings have been relaxed in the way already described. I have tried it occasionally with small skins, and found that the results were quite satisfactory.

A GOOD "SWEAT-BOX."--Professor L.L. Dyche, of the University of Kansas, described to me a sweat-box which he has used, and which is certainly a good one for the creation of a damp atmosphere for the softening of skins, and also to keep half-finished birds in over night, to prevent them from drying up. What a deal of trouble the bird taxidermists of my acquaintance might have saved themselves during the last ten years had they known of, or devised, this simple but perfect contrivance. It is made by selecting a wooden box, of the right size to suit, providing a hinged cover, and coating the entire inside with plaster Paris an inch or so in thickness. To make use of it, it is filled with water and allowed to stand until the plaster lining has soaked full, when the rest of the water is emptied out.

If a layer of wet sand is spread over the bottom, the saturation of the air inside the box, when closed, will be still more complete.

A HEROIC METHOD OF RELAXATION.--Mr. William Brewster thus describes "A New Wrinkle in Taxidermy," in Messrs. Southwick & Jencks' "Random Notes," vol.

ii., No. 1:

"Wis.h.i.+ng to turn a mounted bird into a skin, and having but a limited time to devote to the task, I tried an experiment. Taking a funnel, and inserting the pointed end in the stuffing between the edges of the skin on the abdomen, I poured in a quant.i.ty of hot water (nearly boiling hot) taking care to regulate the injection so that it should be rather slowly absorbed by the stuffing, and holding the bird at various angles, that every portion of the anterior might become soaked. The effect was magical; the skin quickly relaxed, and within fifteen minutes I could bend the neck and make other required changes without any risk of a break.

"My first experiment was with a gull; afterward I tried other birds, both large and small, with equal success. I found also that the plan worked equally well with skins which had been overstuffed, or otherwise badly made. In a very few minutes they would become nearly as tractable as when freshly taken from the birds, and much more so than I have ever succeeded in making them by the use of a damping-box. The only difficulty experienced was that the water, especially if turned in too fast, would escape through shot-holes and other rents in the skin, thus wetting the plumage in places.

Of course, after the required improvements or changes have been made, the stuffing is so thoroughly saturated that the skin must be placed in a very warm place to dry. I dried mine most successfully by placing them on a furnace register, and leaving them exposed to the full blast of heat for several days."

Sc.r.a.pING AND CLEANING RELAXED SKINS.--After a dry bird skin has been softened, it then remains to sc.r.a.pe it clean and manipulate it all over to get it into thoroughly elastic working order, as soft and pliable (if possible) as when first taken off. Small skins should be sc.r.a.ped with the round end of a small bone-sc.r.a.per, which has a sharp chisel edge, but the large ones must be sc.r.a.ped with a small-toothed skin-sc.r.a.per such as is used on small mammals.

Of the many thousand species of recent birds, only the ostriches, penguins, and a few others have the feathers distributed evenly over the whole body.

In all the _Euornithes_ they are arranged in regular patches or groups, called _pterylae_, between which lie the naked or downy s.p.a.ces, called _apteria_. In thin-skinned birds it is the _pterylae_ that need to be attacked with the sc.r.a.per, and so sc.r.a.ped and stretched and pulled apart that the skin widens, and each feather is free, as in life, to move on its own root independently, and take whatever position it should have on the mounted bird. Turn the skin completely wrong side out, sc.r.a.pe it all over, and get every part fully relaxed, and into thorough working order. Large birds, or birds with thick, fat skins, require plenty of work to get out all the grease, and get the wings, legs, and head into a thorough state of collapse. In large, long-legged birds, the tendons must be removed from the leg, the same as if the specimen were a fresh one, for otherwise the wire may split the skin of the tarsus wide open, and make a very bad and unsightly turn at the heel besides. It is a difficult task to remove the tendon from the leg of an old, dry heron or crane, but it must be done.

_Damaged Skins._--It not infrequently happens that in cleaning and sc.r.a.ping a rare and valuable old skin it proves to be "burnt" with grease, and goes to pieces like so much brown paper.

"Now is the winter of our discontent."

If the skin is not torn too badly it may be lined with thin cotton or linen cloth, which must be cut and fitted within, and sewed fast to the skin all over. This plan, though rather tedious to work out, develops admirably when determinedly and carefully pursued.

If the skin goes all to pieces, a manikin must be made, and the pieces glued upon it, one by one, beginning at the tail,--a process which is so simple it is unnecessary to describe it in detail. In Fig. 50 is seen a manikin all ready to receive its feathers, wings, and head.