instead of directly to your front, and skin in the same manner on
the other side, which is now from you. The skin of a fox being very
thin about this part, as indeed, nearly all over its body, you must be
careful while making your cuts to release the skin, not to push the
point of your knife through. As you get along the side of the fox, use
your knife, point downward, cutting edge toward you, on the inner
side, and from you on the outer, with a scraping motion to separate
the skin from the body at the sides.

No doubt, by this time you will be somewhat troubled with a discharge
of blood; if so, use sawdust or silver sand, either of which will not
dirty the skin, but yet affords a good grip. (Plaster is very commonly
used instead of either, but, though a capital absorbent of blood and
grease, I object to it, except in the instances of white or very light
coloured furs.) Silver sand is, I think, the best of all, as sawdust
is apt to get into some furs, and it requires a great deal of pains to
get it out again.

By a little management of the point of the knife, and by undercutting
slightly, you expose the thighs of the hind limbs. The fox lies still
in front of you with its head to your left. Changing your position, go
to the tail, and, seizing the foot nearest to you with your right
hand, and the skin with your left, push and pull at one and the same
time until you expose the knee-joint, or rather--to speak more
correctly--the articulation of the "femur" or thigh bone (i, Plate
III.) with the two smaller bones ("fibula" and "tibia") which form the
shank (K and J).

Let go with your right hand, and by an arrangement of the fingers of
the left--difficult to describe--retain your hold of both the skin and
flesh of the leg, and re-commence skinning with the knife on each side
of the leg until you arrive at the hollow which lies behind, just
above the shank; this exposes daylight between skin and flesh, and
thus you may get your fingers between the two skins, and, finding the
articulation, or joint of the thigh (just mentioned), you push the
point of your knife in, and sever the ligaments, and then return the
loose shank to its skin.

Holding the fingers of your left hand underneath the skin--thumb and
bottom of the palm of the hand opposing--skin out the rest of the
thigh, which brings you just on top of the root of the tail. Turn the
fox in an exactly opposite direction, and repeat the process; you will
before doing th