This vintage volume contains a complete handbook on taxidermy and zoological collecting, with information that will appeal to the amateur taxidermist, collector, osteologist, sportsman, and traveller. With helpful illustrations and a wealth of useful information, this volume is highly recommended for the novice taxidermist, and would make for a worthy addition to collections of related literature. Contents include: “The Worker and the Work to be Done”, “Outfits, and Hints on Hunting”, “How to Select and Study Fresh Specimens”, “Treatment of the Skins of Small Mammals”, “Collecting and Preserving the Skins of Large Mammals”, Collecting Reptiles”, etc. Many vintage books like this are becoming increasingly hard-to-come-by and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, high-quality addition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on taxidermy.

In these heydays of popular zoology, when eager young naturalists are coming to the front in crowds, and fine new scientific museums are starting up on every hand, there is small need to apologize for the appearance of a work designed expressly for the naturalist and museum-builder. Had justice been done, some one would have written this book ten years ago. The rapid and alarming destruction of all forms of wild animal life which is now going on furiously throughout the entire world, renders it imperatively necessary for those who would build up great zoological collections to be up and doing before any more of the leading species are exterminated. It is already too late to collect wild specimens of the American bison, Californian elephant seal, West Indian seal, great auk, and Labrador duck. Very soon it will also be too late to collect walrus, manatee, fur seal, prong-horn antelope, elk, moose, mountain sheep, and mountain goat. All along the Atlantic coast and in Florida the ducks are being exterminated for the metropolitan markets, and the gulls, terns, herons, egrets, ibises, and spoonbills are being slaughtered wholesale for the equally bloodthirsty goddess of Fashion. If the naturalist would gather representatives of all these forms for perpetual preservation, and future study, he must set about it at once. This work is offered as my contribution to the science of zoology and the work of the museum-builder. It is entirely "an affair of the heart," and my only desire in regard to it is that it may be the means of materially increasing the world's store of well-selected and well-preserved examples of the beautiful and interesting animal forms that now inhabit the earth and its waters. The sight of a particularly fine animal, either[viii] alive or dead, excites within me feelings of admiration that often amount to genuine affection; and the study and preservation of such forms has for sixteen years been my chief delight.

Explore the science and art of taxidermy with 'Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting' by W. J. Holland and William T. Hornaday. Originally written in the mid-1800s, this charmingly dated guide offers detailed instructions and alternative methods for the preservation of wild animal specimens. The author explains that with the rapid destruction of animal life worldwide, taxidermy provides an avenue to collect and preserve these beautiful creatures before they disappear forever. Although taxidermy is no longer as popular as it was during the time the book was written, this book still provides a fascinating insight into the field from people considered to be experts in that era.

"A narrative microhistory of the Field Museum of Natural History's groundbreaking expedition to hunt and preserve rare African animal specimens for its collection before it went extinct due to modern progress and natural selection, a common view among natural historians as the 1800s came to a close"--

In Pet Projects, Elizabeth Young joins an analysis of the representation of animals in nineteenth-century fiction, taxidermy, and the visual arts with a first-person reflection on her own scholarly journey. Centering on Margaret Marshall Saunders, a Canadian woman writer once famous for her animal novels, and incorporating Young’s own experience of a beloved animal’s illness, this study highlights the personal and intellectual stakes of a “pet project” of cultural criticism. Young assembles a broad archive of materials, beginning with Saunders’s novels and widening outward to include fiction, nonfiction, photography, and taxidermy. She coins the term “first-dog voice” to describe the narrative technique of novels, such as Saunders’s Beautiful Joe, written in the first person from the perspective of an animal. She connects this voice to contemporary political issues, revealing how animal fiction such as Saunders’s reanimates nineteenth-century writing about both feminism and slavery. Highlighting the prominence of taxidermy in the late nineteenth century, she suggests that Saunders transforms taxidermic techniques in surprising ways that provide new forms of authority for women. Young adapts Freud to analyze literary representations of mourning by and for animals, and she examines how Canadian writers, including Saunders, use animals to explore race, ethnicity, and national identity. Her wide-ranging investigation incorporates twenty-first as well as nineteenth-century works of literature and culture, including recent art using taxidermy and contemporary film. Throughout, she reflects on the tools she uses to craft her analyses, examining the state of scholarly fields from feminist criticism to animal studies. With a lively, first-person voice that highlights experiences usually concealed in academic studies by scholarly discourse—such as detours, zigzags, roadblocks, and personal experience—this unique and innovative book will delight animal enthusiasts and academics in the fields of animal studies, gender studies, American studies, and Canadian studies.