ill at once
recognise unaltered the favourite of fourteen years ago." "And whence the
supplies necessary for your purpose?" "From this," replied she, drawing
out from under the table a skin of the same tawny colour, "_Eccola_," and
then pinching off with her tweezers a small tuft from the supplementary
hide, and gumming over with a camel's hair brush, a bare spot, she
proceeded to cover it. "And what's your remedy here?" said we, laying our
hand upon a large duck,[3] whose glossy grass-green neck had lost much of
its plumage, especially at the base, where it is wont to be, encircled
with a cravat of white feathers. "By robbing others of the same family:
for I always think a bird, while he lacks any of his feathers, is looking
reproachfully at me, and if a parrot could find tongue it might say,

''Tis cruel to look ragged now I'm dead;
Annetta, give my tail a little red.'

But here are my stores;" and, touching a spring, the door of a small room
opened, and revealed unstuffed skins of all sorts, dangling from strings
like _Fantoccini_ near the _Sapienza_, at Christmas-time. "Yonder is a
bird, Annetta, that shot across our path yesterday in the villa Borghese;
was he not then a foreigner of distinction escaped from the prince's
aviary?"--"No; a Campagna bird, but rare;" and she proceeded to display
his lapis-lazuli wings, which shone like burnished armour, and were set
off by a brilliant edging of black feathers, as polished as jet, while the
back was a rich dark brown, and the neck and breast light azure. "Oh!
stuff us one of these birds, pray!"--"_Non dubitate_, one shall be on his
perch expecting you when you return to Rome in November."--"And we must
have, too, that beautiful neighbour of his who wears a short silk spencer
over his back and shoulders, and a full-breasted waistcoat of buff."--"The
Alcedo Hispida: he shall be ready too; they call him hereabouts, 'Martin
the Fisher.'"

We took leave for the time, but frequently returned to the workshop. On
one occasion, we asked Cadet how she attained such skill in taxidermy?
"Our art," she replied, "like yours, consists mainly in observation, and
therefore it must needs come slowly. In fact it has taken my mother and
myself fifteen years to learn the natural instincts, habits, and attitudes
of the birds and beasts of the Roman Fauna; every summer we visit their
haunts, and bring back such specimens as we may catch or as the peasants,
who all know us, may bring. Th