If, however, you wish to produce a prize bird and challenge criticism, then make a neck which will show the joints of the vertebræ, and show them plainly and strikingly. Now there may be a dozen different ways in which that could be done, but the best is to make the neck over a hard skeleton that will show its joints _willy-nilly_. Your best plan is to clean the neck vertebræ without disjointing them, tie your neck-wire firmly underneath them, wrap with fine tow to replace the flesh, bind down with thread, and cover all at the last moment with clay. The windpipe is easily reproduced by wrapping fine tow around a small annealed wire, and then sewing it in its place on the neck. If you have not the cervical vertebræ, the next best thing is to make them roughly and quickly out of wood, wire them together, and use as you would the real bones. The reason why this is necessary to success is that it is very difficult to make a wire bend in angles instead of curves after it has been wrapped with tow and inserted in the neck of the bird.
SETTING THE EYES.--On this point I have always been at war with most of my taxidermic friends. They insist that it is not best to insert the eyes in a bird as soon as it is finished otherwise, but leave the bird to dry without them. Afterward, they insert wet cotton, soften the eyelids, and then insert the clay backing and the eyes. They claim that this is necessary to prevent the skin from being drawn away from the eye by shrinkage in the general drying.
I hold that it is best to set the eyes at once, before the bird dries, in order to secure the greatest degree of elasticity in shaping the eyelids, and thereby have a more perfect mastery of the situation. But having seen my friends secure as good results by their method as I do by mine, I naturally conclude that it is only a matter of personal preference, and either way is good enough.
I shall never forget how vainly I sought, when a lonesome and isolated amateur, to find somewhere in print some useful information about how to remove grease, dirt, and blood-stains from the plumage of birds. I remember well my disgust and anger at the makers of the so-called "complete" manuals of taxidermy that left me groping in Egyptian darkness on that subject, and most others also; and I registered a solemn vow that should I ever write on taxidermy I would do my best to afford some practical information on cleaning the plumage of birds.