The sportsman's handbook to practical collecting, preserving, and artistic setting-up of trophies and specimens : to which is added a synoptical guide to the hunting grounds of the world / by Rowland Ward.

  • Rowland Ward
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sportsman's handbook to practical collecting, preserving, and artistic setting-up of trophies and specimens : to which is added a synoptical guide to the hunting grounds of the world / by Rowland Ward. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    44/150
    the eyes, the nostrils^ and the ears. The delicate skin round the eye is nearly hairless ; it must not on any account be torn or jagged. In a head the eyes and the nose are the most prominent parts, first claiming notice. In treating the nostrils and upper lip operate from inside the mouth; sever the lip neatly high up the gum, over the teeth; and in like manner detach the lip below. The skin will present in these portions a particular thickness, into which, from the inside, a neat midway incision must be carried all along, so that the preservative may penetrate and be carefully rubbed into the cut to the end that these parts may be saved properly. The alum process is best; but if more con- venient the skins may be preserved in pickle (see p. 20). Clean the skin well of all fat and flesh ; rub in the alum, but not on the outside of the nose, and hang up the skin to dry. If there should appear any likelihood of the short hair round the eyes and nostrils slipping, apply some alum judiciously there. Be sure to save the lower jaw. When the head is of Wapiti, and is to be set up thus, it may be a matter of great convenience to pack the horns, and to do that the skull, to which they are attached, may be sawn in two, longitudinally, by which much space may be gained. But if the trophy is to be mounted in the naked bone, this severance is quite inadmissible, and it should in no case be adopted with smaller heads, which are, in fact, almost destroyed by it, the skull is thereby weakened, and at the end of the journey broken to pieces. Such a state of things necessitates great extra labour and expense even if the injury can ever be repaired. Some North American trophies recently received have come in a deplorable condition from this sort of injury, by which neither convenience nor economy can have been secured. For