it has imbibed slime from the ground, wash the part in
water without soap, and keep gently agitating the feathers with your
fingers till they are quite dry. Were you to wash them and leave them
to dry by themselves they would have a very mean and shrivelled
appearance.

In the act of skinning a bird you must either have it upon a table or
upon your knee. Probably you will prefer your knee, because, when you
cross one knee over the other, and have the bird upon the uppermost,
you can raise it to your eye, or lower it at pleasure, by means of the
foot on the ground, and then your knee will always move in unison with
your body, by which much stooping will be avoided and lassitude
prevented.

With these precautionary hints in mind, we will now proceed to dissect
a bird. Supposing we take a hawk. The little birds will thank us with
a song for his death, for he has oppressed them sorely; and in size he
is just the thing. His skin is also pretty tough and the feathers
adhere to it.

We will put close by us a little bottle of the solution of corrosive
sublimate in alcohol, also a stick like a common knitting needle, and
a handful or two of cotton.

Now fill the mouth and nostrils of the bird with cotton, and place it
upon your knee on its back with its head pointing to your left
shoulder. Take hold of the knife with your two first fingers and
thumb, the edge upwards. You must not keep the point of the knife
perpendicular to the body of the bird, because, were you to hold it
so, you would cut the inner skin of the belly and thus let the bowels
out. To avoid this, let your knife be parallel to the body, and then
you will divide the outer skin with great ease.

Begin on the belly below the breastbone, and cut down the middle quite
to the vent. This done, put the bird in any convenient position, and
separate the skin from the body till you get at the middle joint of
the thigh. Cut it through, and do no more there at present, except
introducing cotton all the way on that side from the vent to the
breastbone. Do exactly the same on the opposite side.

Now place the bird perpendicular, the breast resting on your knee,
with its back towards you. Separate the skin from the body on each
side at the vent, and never mind at present the part from the vent to
the root of the tail. Bend the tail gently down to the back, and while
your fingers and thumb are keeping down the detached parts of the skin
on each side of the vent, cut quite