ail to shove skin forward toward wrist, on front of
wing, without breaking union of large, secondary flight feathers with
wing bone.

With scalpel cut and lift out elbow ends of forearm muscles, strip them
out down to as near wrist as possible and cut off.

In a large bird, split skin of forearm and hand along under side after
carefully separating feathers over bare strips of skin. Peel skin back
both ways and remove flesh neatly. Scrape out whatever flesh is in
evidence on hand bones in same way. In a bird with no fat adhering to
the skin, the skull and tail only remain to be cleaned in order to
complete the skinning operation.

To clean skull, remove eyes with a scalpel, scrape brains out through
cut-off skull base, and trim away jaw muscles and a portion of roof of
mouth.

To clean tail, peel it out carefully and scrape and cut away fat and
meat adhering to bone and base of quills.

If you have a specimen with fat adhering to the skin in more or less
loose patches, as in hawks and owls, simply scrape or peel the fat off
with a knife and thumb and finger.

If a fat duck skin is to be prepared the inside layer of skin over the
fat tracts must be sheared off carefully with scissors and the fat then
removed with a skin scraper or dull knife blade, care being exercised
not to tear the outer skin or to pull through feathers with the grease.

To clean and degrease a bird skin which requires such treatment to
prepare for mounting, wash it first in lukewarm ammonia water with mild
soap. Squeeze from this washing and put through a bath of half-and-half
alcohol and spirits of turpentine. Squeeze from this thoroughly and run
through benzine. Compress and relax the skin repeatedly while immersed
in both these baths. When squeezed from the benzine, dry the plumage by
first burying the skin for some minutes in dry plaster of paris.

When nearly all the moisture is drawn out dust skin in the plaster until
natural fluffiness is restored. Do this last out of doors, where the
skin may be beaten well when thoroughly dry, to free it of plaster dust.
Lay skin, right side out, over the left hand and beat with the right,
giving an occasional shaking, the better to loosen plaster dust.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.]

An A1 duster may be made from the brush of an ox tail. Nail this on a
short piece of broomstick and square ends of hair with scissors. This
duster is used instead of beating the plumage with the hand and does the
work much