dditions to the
museum in the bin.

I thoroughly enjoyed these trips, and became the most enthusiastic of
collectors, but I regret to say that with possession my interest ceased.

Mercer bullied me sharply, but it was of no good. If lizards were to be
plunged in spirits and suspended by a silken thread or fine wire to the
cork of the bottle, he had to do it; and though he showed me how, at
least a dozen times, to skin a snake through its mouth, so as to strip
off the covering whole and ready to fill up with sand, so as to preserve
its shape, he never could get me to undertake the task.

Certainly I began to pin out a few butterflies on cork, but I never
ended them, nor became an adept at skinning and mounting quadrupeds and
birds.

"It's all sheer laziness," Mercer used to say pettishly.

"Not it," I said. "I like the birds and things best unstuffed. They
look a hundred times better than when you've done them your way."

"But they won't keep, stupid," he cried.

"Good thing too. I'd rather look at them for two days as they are, than
for two years at your guys of things."

"What!" he cried indignantly. "Guys!"

"Well, so they are," I said. "Look at that owl; look at the squirrel,
with one hind leg fat and the other lean, and his body so full that he
seems to have eaten too many nuts."

"But those were some of the first stuffings," he pleaded.

"But the last are worse," I cried, laughing. "Then look at the rabbit.
Who'd ever know that was a rabbit, if it wasn't for his ears and the
colour of his skin? He looks more like a bladder made of fur."

"But he isn't finished yet."

"Nor never will be," I cried merrily.

"Ah, you're getting tired of natural history," said Mercer, seating
himself on the edge of the bin, and looking lovingly down at its
contents, for this conversation took place up in the loft.

"Wrong!" I cried. "I get fonder of it every day; but I'm not going to
skin and stuff things to please anybody, not even you."

"I'm sorry for you," said Mercer. "You're going to be a soldier. My
father says I'm to be a doctor. You're going to destroy, and I'm going
to preserve."

I burst out laughing.

"I say, Tom," I cried, as he looked up at me innocently, in surprise at
my mirth, and I went and sat at the other end of the bin; "had one
better kill poor people out of their misery than preserve them to look
like that?" and I pointed down at the half-stuffed rabbit.

"Go on," he said quie