all, to roughly represent the
form, and then artistically adjust clay to represent the muscles and
flesh. The appearance presented now should be as a clay model--without
hair--of the specimen taken in hand.

Nothing now remains but to take the skin, properly thinned down and
prepared, and try it over the model, altering the latter where it is
too large or too small. Perhaps it may be necessary to pull it
over--commencing at the head--several times before getting it quite
right. When fairly satisfied with your progress, commence stitching
the skin up from the neck, adding clay where wanted, noticing that, in
the position you are now working to, the neck will hang low, and
rather fine in front, between the fore limbs, and that the flanks will
be tucked up.

Go on sewing up until you are at the point behind the shoulders,
including the fore limbs in this; pad the skin at the toes with clay,
to replace the flesh previously cut away. Leave this now, and go to
the tail end; bend the wire down, and insert it in the hollow of the
skin of the tail, and work on the hind limbs, finishing as you go on,
and sewing up to the point between F and E. This leaves you the
remainder of the body to finish, and also gives you a chance to
dispose of any loose skin about that part. The clay and wire, being
both amenable to any alteration, can be beaten into shape where
required. Finally, sew up, and if your modelling is correct all the
remainder must of necessity be correct also.

To keep the skin in position on the model, tack it down with
galvanised wire points, or by stitching it through in places, such as
occur in the neck and various parts of the limbs. These wires can, of
course, be removed, and all stitches cut and drawn away when the
specimen is dry, at which time the eyes can be inserted, if not
previously done. In all cases, however, the specimen must be
thoroughly dried before it can be finished off by modelling the inside
of the lips and palate with wax or cement (described in Chapter XII),
or before the model tongue is inserted.

The foregoing thus describes the method which may be adopted to
educate the tyro to a correct idea of the osteology of his subject,
and, by analogy, to the osteology and relation of parts of many
others. It is practicable only in the case of mammals done from the
flesh, and whose skeleton is not valuable. In this system, as in all
the following, the model head of any animal, cast as described for the