th scissors shear out all mouth and nose meat, being careful not to
cut off the whisker pockets, which are usually very prominent when the
side nose muscles are partly sheared off.

Skin out the backs of the ears clear to edges by pressing a finger tip
inside the ear and peeling over this with finger nail or other dull
instrument. With scissors shear off meat of butt of ear and whatever
meat and fat adheres to rest of skin.

In sketches of skinned body mark points of shoulder joint and hip joint
and note width of pelvis at hip joints.

Remove the skull from the carcass and clean it by cutting and scraping
away all meat, pulling out the eyeballs, and scooping out the brain.
For the purpose of mounting, the base of the skull may be cut off to
facilitate cleaning, but for study (cabinet) skins the skull must be
kept intact and always accompany by number the skin it was removed from.

Trim all meat from the leg bones and poison these and the skull when
finishing preparation of the skin.

Add a few drops of carbolic acid, well stirred in to the arsenic water
used upon skins of small mammals for mounting. This aids in preventing
decay and slipping of the epidermis.

Apply the poison solution thoroughly with a brush, to all inner surfaces
of the skin and to the toes. If tail was split only at the tip, run a
few drops of arsenic water through it.

Turn the poisoned skin right side out, lay it flat, side pressed to
side, roll up, place in paper, and cover with a damp cloth. Lay in this
way over one night, giving the arsenic solution a chance to penetrate
through to roots of hair before mounting. If a specimen is bloody or
mussed the blood may be cleaned off before skinning by wetting the spots
with alcohol and rubbing the blood and juices out with cornmeal.

The first step in mounting is properly to wire the skull and leg bones.
(For details of this see Fig. 16.)

[Illustration: Fig. 16.]

For the body-wire select a size larger than for the legs, cutting it
twice as long as head, neck, and body. For legs choose a size wire that
will firmly support the specimen in position without wobbling. If the
mammal is to sit erect, the hind leg-wires must be considerably larger
than otherwise and foreleg-wires may be much lighter. (Making the pelvis
loop may be easily followed in diagram in Fig. 17.)

[Illustration: Fig. 17.]

The first body-wire loop is bent to set into the brain cavity. Then the
foreleg loop is made some lit