f
any of the foregoing processes.

Often hardened wax, linseed oil and plaster, plaster composition,
modelling wax, cobbler's wax, shellac, or what not, is used to
represent the muscles and "flabby" parts. Wax is also used to paint
over the mucous membrane, where shown or exposed. All this will be
found fully explained in Chapter XII, thus exploding all the rubbish
talked, and written, about "secret" or "patent" compositions, which,
when put on soft, will ultimately dry as hard as marble. These
wonderful "secrets" may be summed up under three heads--Clay, Plaster,
and Wax!

CHAPTER VIII.

SKINNING, PRESERVING, AND MOUNTING FISH, AND CASTING FISHES IN
PLASTER, etc.

FISH being, perhaps, the most difficult things in the range of
taxidermical science to set up in a satisfactory manner, I would
impress upon the amateur to take particular note of their
peculiarities of shape and colour, and to practise upon any
easily-obtained and tough-skinned fish, such as the perch, which is,
indeed, one of the best of all subjects for the purpose.

However, as I have now before me a pike of over 11 lb, I will take it
to illustrate this lesson.

Provide yourself first with skinning knives (see Figs. 11-13) and a
tool previously figured, which I call the undercutting knife or
scraper (see Fig. 29). It is best made by an artisan, but may be
roughly fashioned by beating out a square piece of steel (a worn-out,
narrow, flat or square file will furnish this), while hot, to a flat
surface at one end, turning it at right angles for about an inch, and
filing each side of this return, as also the point (the latter
previously rounded) to a cutting edge, and afterwards giving it the
requisite hardness by "tempering" it in oil. Many tools used by the
gun stockers are to be bought ready made, which will fulfil all the
requirements of this tool, but it is so easily made that I consider
anyone with the least mechanical ability should be able to make one.
The object of this tool is to run in under bones and to cut and drag
out pieces of flesh through small openings.

Measurements being taken and a board provided on which to trace the
outline, select the best side of the fish--by which I mean the side
most free from bruises or "gaff" marks. Cover this with thin paper
(cap paper) or muslin, which readily adheres by the natural mucus
peculiar to fish. This process, it will be seen, keeps the scales fast
in their seats during the operation of skin