_Damaged Skins._--It not infrequently happens that in cleaning and scraping a rare and valuable old skin it proves to be "burnt" with grease, and goes to pieces like so much brown paper.
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.
[Illustration: PLATE XII. WORKSHOP OF A BIRD TAXIDERMIST.]
We will suppose that the skin of a small bird--a robin, blackbird, or thrush--now lies on the table before us all ready for mounting. Perhaps it is a dry skin which has been thoroughly relaxed, scraped, and worked into pliant shape; but, for the sake of the beginner, we will assume that it is a fresh skin which has just been taken off, poisoned, and turned right side out again, in accordance with the directions for skinning small birds which have been given in Chapter VI. The body of the bird lies before you, and instead of making up the subject as a dry skin, we will mount it.
In mounting small birds the following tools are absolutely necessary to the production of good results: A pair of flat-nosed pliers six inches long, for bending and clinching wires, price sixty cents; a pair of six-inch cutting pliers, for cutting wire, eighty-five cents; a pair of bird-stuffer's forceps, four to six inch, price twenty to seventy-five cents; a nine-inch flat file, twenty-two cents. Make for yourself a stuffing-rod, by taking a piece of _stiff_ brass or iron wire, a little larger and longer than a knitting-needle, hammering one end flat, with a slight upward curve, and inserting the other in an awl-handle.
Of materials you will need some excelsior; some clean, fine tow; a little putty or potter's clay; a spool of cotton thread, No. 40, and some suitable glass eyes. With our tools and materials ready at hand, and the skin of our bird lying before us right side out, we are ready to begin a new operation,--mounting.