d scrambling, with my knife still in its skull, and was quickly out of
sight.

The different kinds of gulls visiting Jethou are very numerous, and some
of them very pretty. One of the finest being the swift sea swallow, with
its lovely grey feathers, forked tail, and long graceful wings. Another
is the sea-pie, a very shapely black and white gull, which makes a noise
quite peculiar to itself when hunting among the rocky inlets for its
food, thus betraying its presence.

Whenever I killed a bird of which I did not know the name, I would
fasten it up to some sticks in as life-like manner as possible, and make
a water colour drawing of it, taking great care to shew every detail, so
that in time I had over thirty drawings, each of which took me half a
day to execute. These are now in the writer's possession, and form a
pretty memento of his Crusoe days.

I took to making these drawings, because my attempts at taxidermy were
grotesquely ludicrous; to put it plainly, they were unmitigated
failures. These remarks apply to my very early attempts, for I would not
have the readers think me incapable after long practice of turning out a
shapely bird or a fish fair to behold. I must own that my early
struggles at skinning and stuffing were certainly funny, as except from
the colour of the feathers one could not tell a tern from a Kentish crow
after I had mangled it about for a few hours. They were wonders of
natural history these specimens of mine, not altogether from my
unskilfulness in handling them, but from the fact that I lacked
materials to work with. During the long nights of autumn, I, to a
certain extent, perfected myself in setting up specimens, but found they
would not keep, as I had no arsenic to work with, using in its place a
disinfectant which was not a preservative, consequently my specimens
began to get mouldy and to smell high, and this prevailing mustiness
brought them to an untimely end, or at least the greater portion of
them. Thinking a day in the sunshine and fresh air might improve them, I
took them all out of the house, and carried them a few at a time down to
the small lawn, as it was nice and open, placing them promiscuously down
on the green sward; and a funny lot they looked. Fish of all kinds,
condition, and colors, and birds in all positions, natural and
unnatural; the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's Waxworks was a
pleasant sight in comparison to my collection, at least that was the
impressi