n the legs and feet, and carefully put them
on. Properly finished, your eagle will--if correctly shaped--be quite
life-like; all the soft parts now look full and fleshy, having lost
that hard appearance inseparable from direct painting on the
shrivelled integument without the intervention of wax.

The wattles and combs of gallinaceous birds, after being washed with
preservative (Formula No. 15), or, when practicable, skinned out and
filled, together with analogous processes on the vultures, and also
the pouches of pelicans, etc, may be treated in like manner, the wax
being thinly or thickly painted as required.

The inside of the mouths of mammals, their tongues, eyelids, and
noses, should be treated in a similar manner.

The skin of fishes also, which, when dry, shrinks away above the eye
and around the mouth and lips, should have these parts replaced by wax
before colouring, in the manner practised on the new specimens in the
Leicester Museum. So little, however, is the want of this understood,
that, of the thousands of stuffed fishes exhibited in the Fisheries
Exhibition, I looked in vain for one with unshrivelled lips or orbital
ridges. For the credit of artistic taxidermy, let us hope I overlooked
some, finished as they should be.

The fins of fishes may be repaired with thin tissue paper, or, if
finless by accident--"ware cat!"--may be replaced by wax. White wax
may be coloured in some instances before using. Paraffin wax does in
some situations, but is not a very tractable medium. Dry colours may
sometimes be rubbed into the wax with advantage. The colouring of a
fish's skin, which, when set up and dried, is colourless, as noted, is
a nice operation involving some artistic ability; the same remarks
apply as those upon the colouring of the bills and feet of birds (see
ante), but with this difference, that although the colour should be
thinly applied as directed, yet in this instance the appearance of
wetness has to be represented. In ordinary taxidermic work this is
managed by adding clear "paper" varnish, or "Roberson's medium," to
the colours, thinned by turpentine, floating the tints on the skin of
the specimen, and nicely blending them, in order to obviate unnatural
streaks or bands of colour.

Speaking of the duck-billed platypus, the Rev. J. G. Wood, in "Homes
without Hands," has some pertinent remarks upon the manner in which
nearly all taxidermists allow the cuticle to dry and shrivel, to the
ultimat