Here, then, rests the shell of the poor hawk ready to
receive from your skill and judgment, the size, the shape, the
features, and expression it bad ere death and your dissecting hand
brought it to its present still and formless state. The cold hand of
death stamps deep its mark upon the prostrate victim. When the heart
ceases to beat and the blood no longer courses through the veins, the
features collapse, and the whole frame seems to shrink within itself.
If, then, you have formed your idea of the real appearance of the bird
from a dead specimen you will be in error. With this in mind, and at
the same time forming your specimen a trifle larger than life to make
up for what it will lose in drying, you will reproduce a bird that
will please you.

It is now time to introduce the cotton for an artificial body by means
of the little stick like a knitting needle; and without any other aid
or substance than that of this little stick and cotton your own genius
must produce those swellings and cavities, that just proportion, that
elegance and harmony of the whole, so much admired in animated nature,
so little attended to in preserved specimens. After you have
introduced the cotton, sew up the orifice you originally made in the
belly, beginning at the vent. And from time to time, till you arrive
at the last stitch, keep adding a little cotton in order that there
may be no deficiency there. Lastly, dip your stick into the solution
and put it down the throat three or four times in order that every
part may receive it.

When the head and neck are filled with cotton quite to your liking,
close the bill as in nature. A little bit of beeswax at the end of it
will keep the mandibles in their proper place. A needle must be stuck
into the lower mandible perpendicularly.

You will shortly see the use of it. Bring also the feet together by a
pin, and then run a thread through the knees, by which you may draw
them to each other as near as you judge proper. Nothing now remains to
be added but the eyes. With your little stick make a hollow in the
cotton within the orbit, and introduce the glass eyes through the
orbit; adjust the orbit to them as in nature, and that requires no
other fastener.

Your close inspection of the eyes of animals will already have
informed you that the orbit is capable of receiving a much larger body
than that part of the eye which appears within it when in life, so
that were you to proportion your eye to the s