The days are past when the taxidermist would wrap a bale of hay colse to a clumsy wooden frame. He has come to be sculptor as he models the anatomy of his beasts. Often months are spent in this modeling, each muscle and sinew is now reproduced. The animal must seem alive when it is completed. Meanwhile like an obligato to the main theme of animal sculpture, foliage and accessories for the group are made. Thousands of leaves and flowers of wax or celluloid are ready in plaster moulds; while in the exhibition hall a case is being built for the group. Soon the artist will change his background sketch (enlarged any hundred times) to its curved, smoothly plaster walls and domed ceiling. While the painting proceeds, a foreground of wood, wire, and plaster is built in the case.
This is in holding with the selected habitat- when the animals are mounted and the leaves assembled into plants, branches or trees, and are set up in the group the background must be linked with the foreground in such a manner that, ideally, the eye cannot detect where the one begins and the other ends. When the illusion of live animals in real surroundings has been produced, the case will be done with a plate glass window, through which it may be viewed adfinitum by an admiring public. But the taxidermist will probably be already begging for a trip to Africa or Tibet Florida in quest of material for other group.
Taxidermy had its start in the commercial field as a formula of preserving trophies of the chase. But some twenty years ago the late Carl E. Akeley lifted taxidermy forever out of the realm of the ordinary and dignified it as a real art by freeing it of its former limitations, and giving it ideals and technical processes of its own, which have opened up vast possibilities of its improvement for educational exhibition. The time to come of taxidermy lies in the museums where time and funds are ready for experimentation, and where scientific advocacy can reinforce art.
The habitat or "natural environment" group is the top expression of the taxidermist's skill. It is a astonishing way of teaching scientific truths about the life histories of birds and animals. In a zoo the visitor is aware that the animals are affected by his presence; they may stop their activities to look at him. But in a habitat group opposite should be true. The visitor should feel that he is in no way influencing the action of the animals, but regularly he is looking them as they live, unconscious of the presence of man.
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