Practical Taxidermy A manual of instruction   By: Montagu Browne

A MANUAL OF INSTRUCTION TO THE AMATEUR

IN COLLECTING, PRESERVING, AND

SETTING UP NATURAL HISTORY SPECIMENS OF ALL KINDS.

TO WHICH IS ADDED A CHAPTER UPON

THE PICTORIAL ARRANGEMENT OF MUSEUMS.

ILLUSTRATED.

BY

MONTAGU BROWNE, F.Z.S, etc.

Curator, Town Museum, Leicester.

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SECOND EDITION,

Revised and considerably Enlarged,

With additional Instructions in Modelling and Artistic Taxidermy.

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LONDON:

1. UPCOTT GILL, BAZAAR BUILDINGS, DRURY LANE, W.C.

(FORMERLY OF 170, STRAND).

NEW YORK:

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 153 157, FIFTH AVENUE.

Plate I Peregrine Falcon on Flight

Showing Method of Binding etc.

Frontispiece see chapter V

LONDON:

1. UPCOTT GILL, LONDON AND COUNTY PRINTING WORKS,

BAZAAR BUILDINGS. W.C.

PRACTICAL TAXIDERMY

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

THE First Edition of "Practical Taxidermy" having now run through the press with, I venture to hope, some profit to students of the art, if I may judge from the many hundreds Of letters I have from time to time received the publishers have invited me to revise such parts of the work as may be expedient, and also to add many technical methods of modelling animals an artistic manner.

I do this the more readily because of the narrow way in which most professional Taxidermists bolster up their art in a secret and entirely unnecessary manner unnecessary because amateur can, but by the severest application, possibly compete with the experience of the technical or professional worker. No pictorial artist ever pretends he has a special brush or colours with which he can paint landscapes or sea pieces at will; he knows that only thorough mastery of the technicalities of his art supplemented by wide experience and close application enables him to succeed as he does, and to delight people who, seeing his facility of handling, may imagine that picture painting is very easy and could be readily acquired perhaps from books. So it is with the Taxidermist. Those, therefore, who procure this book, thinking to do all attempted to be explained therein without long study and without a knowledge of anatomy, form, arrangement, and colour, may put it on one side as useless. These pages are merely an introduction to a delightful art, which must be wooed with patient determination and loving pains until technical skill invests it with beauty.

If I can be of any assistance to my readers, I invite them to write to me if at any time they are puzzled or temporarily disheartened; merely asking them to remember:

(1) That, not being in business, I cannot of course answer purely business communications; and (2) Not being a man of infinite leisure, it must also be remembered that a properly directed envelope for return to the inquirer is of consequence when minutes are precious. Unlike the Prime Minister, I do not like post cards, and never answer them if from unknown correspondents.

I may here mention that this edition is not only considerably enlarged, but has several woodcuts and four plates added, three of which latter have been engraved from photographs specially taken for this work.

I say now, in conclusion, work hard, study hard, and look to good modellers and painters and not to bird stuffers for conceptions of form, arrangement, and colour, and in the end, believe me, you will achieve a better success than attends the labours of those who follow in the old paths of careless or inartistic Taxidermy.

MONTAGU BROWNE.

LEICESTER.

PRACTICAL TAXIDERMY.

CHAPTER I.

THE RISE AND PROGRESS of TAXIDERMY.