ecessary to more perfectly
render the fine points required in giving animals that serio-comic and
half-human expression which was so intensely ridiculous and yet
admirable in the studies of the groups illustrating the fable of
"Reinecke the Fox," which were in the Wurtemburgh Court, class XXX.
and were executed by H. Ploucquet, of Stuttgart. These groups, or
similar ones, are now to be seen in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham.

In nearly all of these groups the modelling and the varied expressions
of hope, fear, love, and rage, were an immense step in advance of the
old wooden school of taxidermy; specimens of which are still to be
found in museums--stiff, gaunt, erect, and angular. Copies of those
early outrages on nature may still be seen in the dreary plates of the
anything but "animated" work of "poor Goldie," who, as Boswell said,
"loved to shine" in what was least understood.

16 PRACTICAL TAXIDERMY.

From this era the English artists, having had their eyes opened by the
teachings of the foreign exhibits of 1851, steadily gained ground, and
the Wards having the sense to employ, in the first instance, foreign
artistic workmen, rapidly pushed to the front, until the finest animal
study of ancient or modern times was achieved by one of them--the
"Lion and Tiger Struggle," exhibited at Paris, and afterwards at the
Sydenham Crystal Palace. This, and one or two analogous works, carried
the English to the foremost ranks of zoological artists; and now that
we embellish our taxidermic studies with natural grasses, ferns, etc.
and with representations of scenery and rockwork, in the endeavour to
carry the eye and mind to the actual localities in which the various
species of animals are found--an advance in art not dreamed of fifty
years ago--and also correctly model the heads and limbs of animals, we
still hold our own, and are as far advanced in taxidermy as any other
nation.

CHAPTER II.

DECOYING AND TRAPPING ANIMALS.

THE decoying and trapping of birds, etc, is a somewhat delicate subject
to handle, lest we degenerate into giving instruction in amateur
poaching; but the application of my direction I must leave to the
reader's own sense of fitness of time and scene, and object to be
snared. And now, before launching into my subject, one word in season.
Observe as a golden rule--never to be broken--this: Do not snare,
shoot, nor kill any more birds or animals than you absolutely want--in
fine, do not kill for killin