TAXIDERMY, the art of preserving the skin, together with the fur, feathers or scales, of animals ; a skin so preserved may then either be retained as a specimen for study purposes, or else mounted for exhibition in museums and private collections, or used as an ornament. Formerly the setting up of animals used to be known as "stuffing," and, in most cases, this was actually what was done; the skin was simply stuffed with straw or wool until it looked something like the living animal. Nowadays, the stuffing process is quite extinct, the greatest care being taken to model the specimens so that they look as life-like as possible. The old fashioned "bird-stuffers" have been replaced by taxidermists, and the verb "to stuff," as applied to the art of taxidermy, is now obsolete; the modern taxidermist "mounts," or "models" a specimen, not "stuffs" it. The art does not appear to be a very ancient one, probably not more than 30o years old ; this state ment only applies to the stuffing or mounting of specimens, as, of course, the curing of skins, for use as wearing apparel, rugs, etc., must have been perfected in very early days. Taxidermy, in a crude style, was practised in England towards the end of the I7th century, as is proved by specimens in the Sloane Collection, which in 1753 formed the nucleus of the British Museum. At the Great Exhibitions held in the middle of the 19th century, many examples of British taxidermy were exhibited; at the Paris Exhibition of 1864 a special zoological section was prepared by Mr. Edwin Ward. The much higher standard of the exhibits in the great museums, and the demands of sportsmen for the proper treatment of their trophies, have transformed the "stuffing" of animals into an elaborate art.
All the early books published on this subject*, such as R. A. F. Reaumur's Treatise (1749) and the Guides and instructions on collecting and preserving natural history specimens, by E. Dono van', W. Captain Thomas Brown', are now quite out of date, and only interesting from an historical point of view. For work in the field the instructions issued by the British Museum of Natural History's, and Rowland Sportsman's Handbook, are of the greatest assistance to the sportsman and collector. As regards the actual mounting, the work is so intricate and requires such special training, that it is rarely undertaken with successful results by amateurs. A few works have been pub
lished dealing with this branch of taxidermy and the reader will find much that is helpful in William T. account of American taxidermic methods.
Taxidermy may then be considered under two quite separate headings, (I) the skinning and preserving of specimens, (2) the mounting of such specimens in as life-like a style as possible. It should be noted that only a very small number of the animals skinned and preserved are set up, or mounted; the great majority go to swell the large study collections now maintained in museums.