arters of an inch across. When whittled, scraped and smooth,
Si painted them brilliant yellow with a central black spot and put
them away to dry (shown on a large scale on Owl Stuffing Plate, Fig. 9,
_a_ and _b_).

Meanwhile, he and Yan got out the two skins. The bloody feathers on
the breasts were washed clean in a cup of warm water, then dried with
cotton and dusted all over with meal to soak up any moisture left. The
leg and wing bones were now wrapped with as much tow as would take the
place of the removed meat. The eye sockets were partly filled with
cotton, then a long soft roll of tow about the length and thickness of
the original neck was worked up into the neck skin and into the skull
and left hanging. The ends of the two wing bones were fastened two
inches apart with a shackle of strong string (_X_, Fig. 2 and
Fig. 7). Now the body was needed.

For this Si rolled and lashed a wad of tow with strong thread until
he made a dummy of the same size and shape as the body taken out,
squeezing and sewing it into a hard solid mass. Next he cut about two
and a half feet of the large wire, filed both ends sharp, doubled
about four inches of one end back in a hook (Fig. 5), then drove the
long end through the tow body from the tail end out where the neck
should join on (Figs. 3 and 4). This was driven well in so that the
short end of the hook was buried out of sight. Now Si passed the
projecting ends of the long wire up the neck in the middle of the tow
roll or neck already there, worked it through the skull and out at the
top of the Owl's head, and got the tow body properly placed in the
skin with the string that bound the wing bones across the back
(_X_, Fig. 7).

Two heavy wires each eighteen inches long and sharp at one end were
needed for the legs. These were worked up one through the sole of
each foot under the skin of the leg behind (_Lw_, Fig. 6), then
through the tow body at the middle of the side (_W_, Fig. 7),
after which the sharp end was bent with pliers into a hook and driven
back into the hard body (after the manner of the neck wire, Fig. 4).

Another wire was sharpened and driven through the bones of the tail,
fastening that also to the tow body (_Tw_, Fig. 7).

Now a little soft tow was packed into places where it seemed needed
to fit the skin on, and it remained to sew up the opening below
(_Bc_ in Fig. 6), the wing slits (_El, H_, Fig. 6 and Fig.
1), and the slit in the nape (_Sn Sn_, Fig. 2) with