Practical taxidermy : a manual of instruction to the amateur in collecting, preserving, and setting up natural history specimens of all kinds to which is added a chapter upon the pictorial arrangement of museums / by Montagu Browne.

  • Browne, Montagu.
Date:
[1884?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical taxidermy : a manual of instruction to the amateur in collecting, preserving, and setting up natural history specimens of all kinds to which is added a chapter upon the pictorial arrangement of museums / by Montagu Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    at Thebes), or the various bulls, cows, dogs, cats, mice, ichneu- mons, hawks, ibises, fishes, serpents, crocodiles, and other sacred animals (mummies of which have been and are constantly found), must have had some glimmerings of taxidermy; many of the subjects are preserved in so beautiful a manner that mummied ibises, hawks, &c., are occasionally discovered even in a good state of preservation, and Cuvier actually found in the intestines of a mummied ibis (Ibis religiosa, a species still found, though rarely, in Egypt) the partly-digested skin and scales of a snake! From this period of the world’s history I can discover but few links to the chain of Practical Taxidermy True it is that the Greeks, Romans, and the tribes which inhabited ancient Britain must have had some knowledge of preserving skins of animals slaughtered by them in the chase, for we everywhere read of the skins of lions, tigers, wolves, &c., being used for purposes of necessity, as in the case of those barbarians who clothed themselves with skins as a protection from the inclemency of the weather, and also in the case of the luxurious Greeks and Romans, who used skins in the adornment of their persons or homes. In fact, the conversion of skins into leather must be of the highest antiquity, for, in the Leeds mummy described in 1828, there was found on the bandages of the head and face a thong composed of three straps of leather, and many of the Egyptian divinities are represented with a lion or leopard skin as a covering for the throne, &c.; and do we not read in many places in Holy Writ of leather and of tanners?— a notable instance, to wit, in Simon, the tanner—in fact, the ancient history of all nations teems with the records of leather and of furs; but of the actual setting up of animals as specimens I can find no trace. I doubt, however, if we can carry taxidermy proper farther back than to about 150 years ago, at which date naturalists appear to have had some idea of the proper preservation and mounting of natural history specimens; but Reaumur, more than a century and a quarter ago, published a treatise on the preser- vation of skins of birds; however, as his plan was simply setting up with wires birds which had previously been steeped in spirits of wine, this method did not find much favour. It appears that,