hose death more
or less of mystery hangs--this mystery so dear to the imagination of
the youthful amateur! In some places the death of the vulpine robber
of hen roosts is hailed with delight, and people are to be found even
--oh, horror!--willing to grasp in friendship the hand of the slayer.

In such a county as Leicestershire, foxes are not "accidentally"
killed, but when so, what bewailings over the "late lamented!" what
anathemas upon the villain's head who is suspected of "vulpicide"! If
it were not so serious a matter, one would be inclined to laugh over
Anthony Trollope's description, in the "American Senator," of the old
hunting farmer who moved himself and his dinner to the other side of
the table, in speechless indignation, lest he should be contaminated
by the presence of a sympathiser with a man who wantonly killed a far
too sacred fox, which gobbled up the aforesaid man's ducks and fowls.
Let this sad relation be a warning to all who look with acquisitive
eyes on the scented jacket of our "Reynard."

Moral, procure your specimens from the Highlands, where they are not
worshipped, nor protected, with a view to being hunted to death
afterwards.

Having procured our specimen, we lay it in state on the modelling
table, and, having decided to mount it by the first process mentioned
at the beginning of this chapter, viz, by using the skeleton as a
foundation, we have further to decide if the animal is to be
open-mouthed or not. In the first case, we shall require the skull, in
order to show the teeth and palate; in the latter case, we may discard
the skull if we choose, making a model of the head in a similar manner
to that of the stag, but with the difference that now, our specimen
not being horned, will make a mould and model much more easily.

We decide, then, to keep the skull as part of the skeletal foundation.
Skin out the animal in the usual manner, as described in the last
chapter, with these differences, that the skin must be split on the
underneath, from the vent to above the shoulder (in some cases, and
for some attitudes, this cut must extend up the throat); cross cuts
from this must extend all the way down the limbs, on their inside
surfaces. By these five cuts the body is released entirely from the
skin, the head being cut off at the nose, and the feet at the claws;
nothing, therefore, of the skeleton remains in the skin but the cores
supporting the claws.

Measure the body now carefully for s