equisites
was brought out, and with the black squatting down upon his heels to
watch us attentively, I helped Uncle Dick prepare his first skins.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

HOW TO PREPARE SKINS, AND GO FISHING.

The process was very simple, for he took the thrush and the lories,
inserted a sharp-pointed penknife just through the skin, and then with
clever fingers turned the delicate skin back, taking care not to injure
the feathers either by the moisture of the bird's flesh or by handling
and roughening the plumage, the result being that he skilfully turned
the skin inside out after cutting through the legs and wings, cleaning
the bones of flesh, and leaving in the skull, after stripping the bird
right to the beak.

It was surprising how beautifully clean everything came away, so that
when the fleshy side of the skin had been brushed over with moistened
arsenical soap, the wing-bones tied together, the hollow of the skull
and orbits of the eyes filled up with cotton-wool, and a ball of the
same placed for the body, the skin being turned back over all and
slightly shaken, a stranger would hardly have known that the flesh of
the bird had been removed.

There was no odour except the aromatic scent of the preserving soap; and
when a little sugar-paper had been twisted up into which to thrust the
bird's head and shoulders to keep the neck short, and the bird had lain
in the sun for a few hours, it became quite stiff and dry, exactly like
the skins with which I was familiar.

Uncle Dick insisted upon my doing the thrush and one of the lories,
while he did the pigeons, whose skins were so tender, and so covered
with oily fat, that they required a great deal of care to keep the
feathers unsullied.

I set to work then, skinning my birds pretty readily from old
practice, and after a little bungling I managed to make of them
respectable-looking skins.

"You'll soon improve, Nat," said my uncle, as we laid our specimens all
together in the sun, the black nodding his approval at all we did; but
the skins had not been lying there long, and our hands washed previous
to putting on the kettle for tea, before our new friend jumped up in a
great state of excitement, pointing to a reddish-brown streak that
seemed to run from the wood nearly to where our specimens lay.

"Ants!" exclaimed my uncle, darting to the skins, and shaking off a few
of the enemies that had come to the attack; and it was not until we had
contrived to mak