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The brilliant scarlet plumage of the flamingo and ibis, and the exquisite pink rose-color and white of the spoonbill naturally attracted the evil eyes of the "milliner's taxidermists" and other bird-butchers. From Florida these birds quickly vanished. The six great breeding colonies of Flamingoes on Andros Island, Bahamas, have been reduced to two, and from Prof.
I mentioned the remarkable results obtained by the Peary and Roosevelt expeditions and pointed to the fact that the specimens brought back and properly set up by efficient taxidermists, did, in fact, give the common people some notion of the wonders of animal life. "Nothing of the kind," he said. "Look at that boa-constrictor you have out there. It is stuffed and in a glass case.
As soon as tiffin had been eaten my wife worked at her photography, while I busied myself over the almost innumerable details of the preparation and cataloguing of our specimens. About six o'clock, accompanied by the two Chinese taxidermists carrying bags of traps, we would leave the tents.
While the work was going on other marmots were watching us curiously from half a dozen mounds, and we set nine traps before it was time to return for dinner. The two Chinese taxidermists had taken a hundred wooden traps for smaller mammals, and before dark we inspected the places they had found. He was only ten inches long and covered with soft yellow-white fur.
The easier the life, the more irksome such occupations are, unless, indeed, one belongs to the sect of shaking quakers or to the honorable guild of carpenters or taxidermists.
Adams forgot time as he stood examining these things; then he turned his attention to the trophies, mounted by Borchard of Berlin, that prince of taxidermists.
The scenery remains, but of the great wild herds, only samples are left, and of some species not even that. The last bison of Colorado were exterminated in Lost Park by scoundrels calling themselves "taxidermists," in 1897. Of the 200,000 mule deer that inhabited Routt County and other portions of Colorado, not enough now remain to make deer hunting interesting.
When we reached camp I directed the two taxidermists to prepare the skeleton of the wolf, but to keep well away from the tents. Charles and I had been talking a good deal about antelope steak, and for tiffin I had cut the fillets from one of the young gazelle. We were very anxious to "make good" on all that had been promised, so we cooked the steak ourselves.
One of the most characteristic of their family is the Ornithorhynchus, or Duck-bill, which the early naturalists first thought was a fraud of the taxidermists, or bird-stuffers, and then, when finally convinced, deemed it a "freak-of-nature." But it is not a freak creature, but a "connecting-link" between the two great families of creatures.
They were driven by our cook and the two Chinese taxidermists, each of whom sat on his own particular mound of baggage with an air of resignation and despondency. Their faces were very long indeed, for the sudden transition from tie back seat of a motor car to a jolting cart did not harmonize with their preconceived scheme of Mongolian life.
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