Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting. W. J. Holland

Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting - W. J. Holland


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302

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

FIG. PAGE
82. Apparatus for Inflating Larvæ, 314
83. Drying Oven, 315
84. Drying Oven for Larva Skin (After Riley), 315
85. Wire Bent into Shape for Mounting Larva (After Riley), 316
86. Breeding Cage (After Riley), 317
87. Breeding Cage, 318
88. Net-frame (After Riley), 320
89. Net-head, for Removable Frame (After Riley), 321
90. Folding Net (After Riley), 321
91. Collecting Jar, 322
92. Perforated Paper Disc for Jar, 322
93. Method of Pinching a Butterfly, 325
94. Manner of Folding Paper Envelope, 328
95. Butterfly in Envelope, 328
96. Double Mount, 330
97. Frame for Mounting Beetles, 330
98. Setting-board, 331
99. Setting-board (After Riley), 331
100. Setting-block, 331
101. Setting-block, with Butterfly, 331
102. Setting-Needle, 332
103. Box for Receiving Setting-boards, 333
104. Shingling Specimens, 334

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      Eternal vigilance is the price of a collection.

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      The need of thoroughly skilled collectors is increasing every hour; and right here let me say to the young naturalist athirst for travel and adventure, There is no other way in which you can so easily find a way to gratify your heart's desire as by becoming a skilful collector.

      The most important vertebrate forms are being rapidly swept off the face of the earth by firearms, traps, and other engines of destruction. In five years' time—perhaps in three—there will not be a wild buffalo left in this country outside of protected limits. There are less than one hundred even now—and yet how very few of our museums have good specimens of this most interesting and conspicuous native species.

      The rhytina, the Californian elephant seal, the great auk, and the Labrador duck have already been exterminated. For many years the West Indian seal was regarded as wholly extinct, but a small colony has lately been discovered by Mr. Henry L. Ward on a remote islet in the Gulf of Mexico. The walrus, the manatee, the moose, mountain goat, antelope, mountain sheep, the sea otter, the beaver, elk, and mule deer are all going fast, and by the time the museum-builders of the world awake to the necessity of securing good specimens of all these it may be too late to find them.

      Even in South Africa, where big game once existed in countless thousands, nothing remains of the larger species save a few insignificant springboks, and no game worth mentioning can be found nearer than the Limpopo Valley, eight hundred miles north of the Cape!

      Now is the time to collect. A little later it will cost a great deal more, and the collector will get a great deal less. Sportsmen, pot-hunters, and breech-loading firearms are increasing in all parts of the world much faster than the game to be shot, and it is my firm belief that the time will come when the majority of the vertebrate species now inhabiting the earth in a wild state will be either totally exterminated, or exist only under protection.

      But do not launch out as a collector until you know how to collect. The observance of this principle would have saved the useless slaughter of tens of thousands of living creatures, and prevented the accumulation of tons upon tons of useless rubbish in the zoological museums of the world. It costs just as much to collect and care for scientific rubbish as it would to do the same by an equal number of scientific treasures. Between fool collectors on one hand, and inartistic


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