the body and
legs of large birds. The Cassowary in the Leicester Museum has been
worked up largely in this manner.)

Steel pins with black bead heads are first-rate helps to binding. They
are sold in various lengths, and being long, sharp, and fine, quite
supersede ordinary pins.

Audi alteram partem! Let us now take the evidence of Waterton:

"You will observe how beautifully the feathers of a bird are arranged;
one falling over the other in nicest order, and that, where this
charming harmony is interrupted, the defeat, though not noticed by an
ordinary spectator, will appear immediately to the eye of a
naturalist. Thus, a bird not wounded, and in perfect feather, must be
procured, if possible, for the loss of feathers can seldom be made
good; and where the deficiency is great all the skill of the artist
will avail him little in his attempt to conceal the defect; because,
in order to hide it, he must contract the skin, bring down the upper
feathers and shove in the lower ones, which would throw all the
surrounding parts into contortion.

You will also observe that the whole of the skin does not produce
feathers, and that it is very tender where the feathers do not grow.
The bare parts are admirably formed for expansion about the throat and
stomach, and they fit into the different cavities of the body at the
wings, shoulder, rump, and thighs, with wonderful exactness, so that
in stuffing the bird, if you make an even rotund surface of the skin,
where the cavities existed, in lieu of re-forming them, all symmetry,
order, and proportion are lost for ever.

You must lay it down as an absolute rule that the bird is to be
entirely skinned, otherwise you can never succeed in forming a true
and pleasing specimen.

You will allow this to be just, after reflecting a moment on the
nature of the fleshy parts and tendons, which are often left in.
First, they require to be well seasoned with aromatic spices;
secondly, they must be put into the oven to dry; thirdly, the heat of
the fire, and the natural tendency all cured flesh has to shrink and
become hard, render the specimen withered, distorted, and too small;
fourthly, the inside then becomes like a ham or any other dried meat.
Ere long the insects claim it as their own, the feathers begin to drop
off, and you have the hideous spectacle of death in ragged plumage.

Wire is of no manner of use, but, on the contrary, a great nuisance,
for, when it is introduced, a disagre