In the preparation of museum specimens in general there is, from first to last, a great deal of painting to be done, and a knowledge of how to paint specimens properly is quite as necessary as a knowledge of how to mount them.

Materials Necessary for General Work.

Windsor & Newton's Tube Colors, as follows:

Ivory black, 8 cts.;
Vandyke brown, 8 cts.;
Burnt sienna, 8 cts.;
Raw sienna, 8 cts.;
Burnt umber, 8 cts.;
Raw umber, 8 cts.;
Naples yellow, 8 cts.;
Chrome yellow, 8 cts.;
Yellow ochre, 8 cts.;
Indigo, 8 cts.;
Indian red, 8 cts.;
Vermilion, 15 cts.;
Flake white, 8 cts.;
Sugar of lead, 8 cts.

For coarse work, all these colors, except the finer ones, should be bought in one-pound cans, ground in oil. In addition to colors ground in oil, it is extremely desirable to have from one to two pounds of each of the following:

Dry Colors, and Cost per Pound.

Zinc white 10 cts.
Vandyke brown 15 cts.
Chrome yellow 25 cts.
Lamp-black 35 cts.
Plumbago 10 cts.
Raw sienna 15 cts.
Burnt umber 15 cts.
Raw umber 15 cts.
Burnt sienna 15 cts.

To the enterprising taxidermist a few dollars judiciously expended in such materials as the above are bread cast upon the waters, that will be sure to return to him before many days, buttered on both sides.

No matter what it costs, have the right kind of brushes, and a good assortment of coloring materials. Do not try to "get along" with whatever you happen to have, if it happens to be not the right thing. Don't try to paint fish scales with a sash tool, or delicate fin-rays with a fitch. Use for such purposes delicate, little sable pencils (flat), Nos. 1 to 4. Take good care of them after use, wash them out with soap and water, or benzine, and keep them in good working order by keeping them clean and soft. Do not let the colors on your palette get in a nasty mess, fit to turn an artist's stomach inside out, but keep your palette clean and in good order. Take from the tubes only as much color as you are likely to use. Keep the centre of your palette free from masses of color, so that you can have that space for mixing.

Only those who have first been taught the slipshod ways of the slouch, and afterward learned the methods of the artist, can realize the advantages in favor of the latter as revealed in results.

General Principles.—The skins and fleshy parts of all mammals and birds become shrunken, mummified and colorless when dry, and if not covered with hair or feathers require to be painted with the colors which have disappeared. As to what the colors should be, the taxidermist must learn by observation from living specimens, or those freshly killed, or from good colored illustrations.

Surface.—Whatever the subject to be painted, the first care is to see that the surface is properly prepared to receive the color. If it be skin, it must be perfectly clean, and free from dirt, dust, or loose scales. If a skin has any sort of powdery deposit upon it, it must be scraped clean with a knife. Holes and seams must be filled up with papier-machÉ, long enough in advance that it will have time to dry. Papier-machÉ which is to be painted should always be given two coats of white shellac, mixed rather thin, before putting on any paint. If this is not done, the machÉ will absorb two or three coats of paint, like a sponge, and the surface will dry perfectly dead.

Gloss.—The colors on terrestrial mammals and birds (except the mouth parts and noses of the former) are very seldom, if ever, what may be called glossy. The mouth parts of mammals, or at least such as are wet by the animal's saliva, are always glossy, as also are the edges of the eyelids, and the bare end of the nose in ruminants.

To give paint a perpetual gloss, like varnish, use colors ground in oil, and mixed with boiled linseed oil only when applied.

To give paint a faint gloss, use colors ground in oil, and mix with a mixture of boiled linseed oil and turpentine, equal parts.

To have paint dry without gloss, mix with turpentine only when it is applied.

To have paint dry flat and dead, use dry colors, and mix with turpentine.

To make paint dry quickly and be very hard, mix with it a little sugar of lead (ground in oil) fresh from the tube.

To paint the skin of an animal, and yet make it look as if the skin contained the color instead of bearing it upon its surface, use oil colors, mix with boiled linseed oil and turpentine, equal parts, and apply. When the paint is beginning to dry, so that it is sticky, take some dry color of a corresponding tint, dip into it a clean, dry, square-ended bristle brush of good size, and twirl it about until it becomes filled with the dry powder, then, with light and delicate strokes, apply it directly upon the painted surface so that the dry color will fall upon the wet paint like a shower of colored dust. This is to be done with the motion that painters use in "stippling," and may very well be done with a stippling brush, if you have one. Do not get on too much of the dry color, or the effect will be spoiled. Your eye must teach you when to stop. In this process of stippling dry color into wet paint, plaster Paris may very frequently be used to good advantage to deaden gloss, and soften effects. In coloring the hairless portions of the faces, hands, etc., of apes, baboons, and monkeys, and on many other subjects, this process is of very great value.

Blending Colors.—If two colors are laid down, one against the other, each in a solid mass, up to the imaginary line that lies between them, the effect is hard and unpleasing, because unnatural. Nature never joins two contrasting-colors without a blending together and softening of the two tones where they touch each other. If it be red and brown, the red merges a little way into the brown, imperceptibly, perhaps, and the line of demarcation between the two is thus softened, and naturalized, if you please. Therefore, in your painting have no hard lines where your colors meet, but always blend adjoining colors together by passing a small brush over the line where they meet.

Strength of Tones.—The colors that Nature puts on an animal are not hard, crude, and staring, like bright red in the mouth of a mounted quadruped, but they are always in harmony with the other parts of the object. A bird may have yellow legs, but if it does, you may be sure they will not be a bright, glossy, chrome yellow, so gaudy as to instantly catch the eye. The chances are, they will be Naples yellow, with only a tinge of chrome. Learn to soften tints so they will not be staring, gaudy, and offensive to the eye. Examine the tongue of a live tiger or lion, and you will notice its color is a pale pink.

In all painting, study the harmony of colors, the strength of tones, and the blending of tints. Do not get your colors too gaudy, too sharply contrasted, nor laid on roughly; but paint evenly, and keep all your colors in perfect harmony.

Painting the Skin of Thinly Haired Mammals.—It very often happens that the skin of a thin-haired mammal has a decided color of its own, which must be imparted to it by painting. This is particularly the case with our next of kin—the apes and monkeys. The orang utan has a chocolate-colored skin, except the old males, in which it is black; the mona monkey has a bluish skin, and the faces of nearly all primates require painting. To paint a skin through thin hair, use oil colors mixed with turpentine, and made so thin that the mixture runs over the skin as soon as it touches it, like water. By separating the hair, it is often possible to get the paint on the skin without saturating the hair save at its roots; but if the turpentine color does get on the hair it must be sponged off with benzine. Do not mix your colors with oil, or you will get into serious trouble; but the oil in which the tube color has been ground will be just sufficient to give a natural tone to the skin. If the color when put on appears too strong and conspicuous, stipple the surface with a little plaster Paris, to tone it down.

Painting Legs and Beaks of Birds.—Paint the legs and beaks of such birds as require it, with a mixture of boiled linseed oil and turpentine, equal parts of each, and have your paint thin enough on the legs that it will not obscure the scales. On the beak, a thicker coat is necessary, and, in fact, it is nearly always necessary to put on two coats. In coloring the beaks of toucans and hornbills, blend adjoining colors very deeply but evenly, and let there be no hard boundary lines anywhere. A little white wax softened and cut with turpentine and mixed with the paint on a bird's beak gives the color a depth and transparency quite similar to the appearance of the beak of a living bird.

Painting Mounted Fishes.—A fish must be perfectly dry before it is touched with a brush. Time spent in painting a half-dry specimen is so much thrown away. The repairs with papier-machÉ must be complete and dry, and the specimen perfectly clean. Nearly every fish possesses in its coloring pigment a quality which imparts to it a silvery, metallic lustre; therefore, to secure the finest result attainable in painting a fish, either an actual specimen or a plaster cast, all those that are silvery must first be coated over the entire scaly surface with nickel leaf, laid on sizing, similar to the treatment of gold leaf in gilding.

With dark-colored fishes satisfactory work may be done without the use of nickel leaf, except on the under parts, which are nearly always silvery white. It is absolutely impossible to reproduce the brilliant lustre so characteristic of white scales by the use of white paint alone, or even silver bronze, or silver paint. Without the nickel underneath the paint looks dead and artificial. If you are called upon to make a large collection with as little outlay as possible, it will be sufficient to omit the nickel leaf, for your paint will still faithfully record the colors. But if you wish to have your fish look as brilliantly beautiful as when taken struggling from the water, put on the leaf first, and paint on it, thinly, so that the silver will show through your colors and impart to them the desired lustre. If you paint too thickly, the leaf will be covered up, and its lustre obscured.

Do not attempt to use silver bronze, silver paint, or even silver leaf, for nickel leaf is the only substance which has sufficient lustre and will not oxidize, and turn yellow.

If the whole body of a fish is dark, and without silvery tints, it is, of course, unnecessary to use leaf, for the lustre can be obtained by varnishing over the paint.

In many fishes, such as the scaled carp, for example, Marsching's gold paint or Japanese gold can be used directly on the scales (after the entire fish has had a thin coat of Hendley's enamel varnish), and the silver paint can be used to good effect in edging the scales. On the belly, however, which is silvery white, nickel leaf must be used. The heads of most fishes are so dark as to render the use of leaf unnecessary upon them, and of course it need not be used on the fins.

Painting Plaster Casts of Fishes, Reptiles, Etc.—When a cast is first taken from the mould, it will nearly always be found that its surface is pitted here and there with little round holes caused by air-bubbles. The process of wetting the inside of these holes, and carefully filling each one with mixed plaster Paris is called "pointing up" a cast. After this has been carefully done, and the form and surface of the white cast is perfect, if the cast is thoroughly dry we are ready to begin to paint it, and proceed as described in the preceding section.

In case you find it impossible to use nickel leaf on your fishes, you can do very good work without it, except that the silvery parts will not be really silvery, and the white paint put on will gradually turn yellow with age. After you have given the specimen a good coat of colors (using zinc white for the silvery parts, because it is more permanent than other whites), varnish the specimen all over with a kind of heavy white varnish called Siccatif de Harlem, or, lacking that, enamel varnish. This will dry in about twenty minutes, after which paint the object over again, this time with extreme care in the final touches. In painting fishes and reptiles, there is a vast amount of detail to be wrought out, and constant blending of colors. On many fishes each scale must be marked off and painted separately. In blending the edges of two adjoining colors, it must be done with a clean brush—a small one, of course—with either a quick, nervous motion along the line of contact, or else a steady sweep, according to circumstances. When the brush gets full of paint, wash it out in benzine (not turpentine), because it quickly becomes clean, and dries perfectly in a moment.

The eyes of fishes and reptiles are so peculiar, and vary so exceedingly, that it is a practical impossibility to provide glass eyes that will be exactly right for each species. For fishes, as good a way as any is to let the eye be cast in situ, and when you paint the fish, paint the eye also as it should be, and when dry, varnish it over with a thick coat of soluble glass or enamel varnish.