Skin (animal)

“ One curious fact that has come to light is that in the latter stages of its development the skin of the young animal has a strongly marked pattern of longitudinal and transverse stripes, which disappear before hatching, giving place to the spotted skin of the adult animal. ”

“ In either case the animal-skin is conceived as a cloak thrown round the wicked enchanter; and if you can only pierce the skin, whether by the stab of a knife or the shot of a gun, you so rend the disguise that the man or woman inside of it stands revealed in his or her true colours. ”

“ To skin an animal "open", rip the skin on the belly from the point of the lower jaw to the vent, down the back of the hind legs and on the inside of the front legs across the breast to the point of the brisket. Animals that are intended only as furs may have the feet cut off, but bears, mountain lions, wolves and wolverines should have the feet skinned out to the ends of the toes, leaving the claws attached to the skin. ”

“ Thoroughness.—The principles to be observed in skinning the body are precisely the same as those given for small mammals. Remember that it is easier to take the skin off clean and free from flesh as you cut it from the animal, and can stretch it tight with your left hand in order to shave the flesh off clean, than it will be to clean the skin after it is off. An excess of flesh left on the skin means unnecessary weight, a waste of preservatives, and longer time in curing the skin. A clean, thin skin is more easily and quickly cured and carried than one badly taken off. ”

“ When your mammal is quite dry, dress the fur with a fine comb and brush, and beat it with a small piece of whalebone or a little switch, to make it stand out from the skin, full and fluffy, as in life. This end must be accomplished, no matter how long it takes.
Procure some tube colors, oil and turpentine, equal parts, and a small sable brush, with which to tint the eyelids and the end of the nose their natural color. Put a little varnish and turpentine, equal parts of each, on the toe-nails, and, in short, do everything you can that will give the specimen the look of a living animal. ”

“ Accompanying this change in the appearance of the skin, the animal becomes weak and languid, loses his spirit, breaks out into sudden and abundant perspirations upon slight exercise, and shows himself unequal to his work. Now, the ready remedy for this state of things is the removal of the excess of hair, and the exposure of the skin to the action of the atmosphere. If the coat be clipped close to the skin or singed, or, better still, be shaven, the animal preserves his strength and vigour, and is equal to all the labour that may reasonably be imposed upon him. ”

“ I have been employed the whole of the day in skinning a young lion, and it is not yet finished. I am taking the skin off complete. It is the first seal I have skinned in this way, and I find it a very tedious job. I don't know any other animal that would be so difficult to skin. ”

“ One secret of success in filling the body lies in gradually and equally filling out the entire body to fair proportions before finishing any one part. Give the animal its exact attitude, then proceed. If there is an apparent lack of skin at any particular point, attack that first, and fill it out. You will soon find how easy it is to draw skin from one part of the body to another by judicious filling.
Having finished the neck and shoulders, leave that part and go to the haunches. Fill around the base of the tail, the hips, the upper part of the thighs, and the abdomen. ”

“ With long-haired animals which have no stripes or spots, and on which the hair can be made to hide all seams, it is best to cut out triangular strips of skin. In the latter case it saves much time and hard labor. It certainly gives a better specimen, and if such tricks leave no visible trace upon the animal, where is the harm? I care not if a skin be slit in twenty places so long as the cuts are tightly sewn up, and are invisible to the eye of the observer. ”

“ Skins are dressed by spreading, scraping off the flesh, and for some purposes the hair, with a sharp piece of bone, stone, or iron attached to a short handle, and used like an adze. The skin is then smeared with the animal's brains, and rubbed or pounded by a very tedious process till it becomes soft and white, some hides being previously smoked and bleached with white clay. ”

“ The hair of the animal whose skin is intended for a float is sometimes scraped off before the skin is removed from the body, otherwise it may be left until the skin is partly dry and then be shaved off. ”

“ Fishes, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals, all agree in this, that they have a special clothing of the skin—scales, feathers and fur, respectively. These three kinds of structure, although so widely differing in appearance, are practically formed all in the same way, viz., by alternate ingrowths and outgrowths of the skin; the ingrowth forming the root of the scale, hair or feather, and the outgrowth its projecting part. If these infoldings and outgrowths of the skin could be straightened out into a plane surface, the skin of a small vertebrate would cover an enormous area. ”

“ The hair becomes encreasingly dry, withered and erect, the skin 591dry, powdery, rigid and more and more firmly adherent to the bones and muscles, losing all its natural pliancy and mellowness, and becoming like that of a dead animal. ”

“ The skin adheres to the body only at certain points, where it is connected by a loose areolar tissue, and the spaces thus left can be filled with air at the pleasure of the animal, through the large cheek-pouches, which have an opening at the bottom, and thus communicate with the spaces under the loose skin. ”

“ The animal may now be turned on its belly and each leg stump hauled tightly out to the bottom of each stake; the skin is now turned up over the back, and stripped up as far as the attachment of the ears; great care must now be exercised in separating their roots from the head without cutting the skin; divide carefully round the eyes, lips, and corners of the mouth, and the skin will be free. ”

“ The animal sensibility of the skin is, like that of the mucous surfaces, subjected to the essential influence of habit, which can transform successively into indifference or even into pleasure, what was at first painful. ”

“ The usual and time-honoured method of dressing skins, say a rabbit's skin, is — directly it is removed from the animal — to nail it on a board, and rub it in with alum four parts, and common salt one part, or plunge it in a warm solution of the same for a day or so, taking it out, nailing it on a board, letting it dry, rubbing it down with pumice stone, and plunging it again and again, and repeating the drying and pumice-stoning process until the skin becomes pliable. ”

“ If the skin is to be used as a robe, the hair is left on, and the animal's brains are rubbed into the inner side of the pelt, after the fat has been removed, and then the skin is left to dry. That softens the pelt; but traders prefer skins to be sun-dried or cold-dried. ”

“ At first thought it would seem strange that a warm-blooded animal with no fur to protect it could so enjoy the cold, but should we examine beneath the soft, velvety skin we would find a great layer of fat, from ten to eighteen inches thick. ”

“ A common fault is the close clipping and even singeing of the hair in the hollow of the heel. The stiff, bristly ends of the hairs on one fold of the pastern continually prick the skin of the adjacent fold when the animal is in motion and not only is this irritating to the healthy skin, but it becomes incomparably more so when that is congested and tender. ”

“ In putting together an animal with the legs in the skin, you are necessarily troubled somewhat by the skin of the body, which hinders the turning of your wrench, etc.; but all such difficulties exist only to be overcome. ”

“ Then the skin of its nose, if worn round the neck, is a decisive preventive against poison; and the ashes of the animal itself, after it has been burnt over a slow tire, will, if taken internally, give all the qualities of the ape, cunning, adroitness, and the powers of imitation. ”

“ The skin has now nothing to unite it to the body, and, consequently, may be drawn off with perfect ease.
`This scientific fact has been known for many years; the Greenlanders make constant use of it; when they have killed a seal or walrus they distend the skin that they may tow the animal more easily ashore, and then remove its hide at a moment's notice.' The remaining animals were subjected to the same treatment, and, to my great joy, in a couple of days the skins were all off, and being prepared for use. ”

“ In these cases the profuse secretion of sweat, and the friction of the harness is a marked local factor in its production. It often shows a preference for the summer season, the period of shedding the coat, the heavy coated animal, the animal with white, thin or delicate skin. Youth also predisposes.
Symptoms. There is usually erection or roughness of the hair, and the formation at such points of minute papules like small peas collected in groups. The skin may feel hot, thickened, lacking in pliancy, not to be pinched up in folds, the panniculus is contracted and manipulation shows tenderness. ”

“ While the salt and alum or acid pickle will keep our animal skins safely and in a relaxed condition ready for further preparation at any time, it will not answer for bird skins. For this we have a solution for keeping bird skins soft:
After skinning the bird and applying some arsenical solution to the inside, brush this solution liberally over the entire inside of the skin. ”

“ One word more as to the importance of the skin in the animal economy, and that word a summary of its functions and principal vital attributes. The skin is a "sanitary commissioner," draining the system of its impurities; it is an energetic labourer, in that perpetual interchange of elements which in its [115] essence constitutes life; it is a regulator of the density and fluidity of the blood; it performs the office of a lung in supplying the blood with oxygen, and abstracting its carbon; it changes the crude organic elements of the blood, so as to render them capable of nutrition ”

“ It is not a large animal, so that a considerable number of skins would be required in order to make a covering which should overlap a structure forty-five feet in length and fifteen in breadth. Were it a solitary animal, there might be a difficulty in procuring a sufficient number of skins. But it is partly gregarious in its habits, living together in small families, seven or eight being sometimes found to inhabit a single dwelling-place. It is, therefore, sufficiently rare to make its skin valuable, and sufficiently plentiful to furnish the requisite number of skins. ”

“ The skins of the beasts which they killed in hunting naturally presented themselves for their covering; but they must be dressed however before they could be properly used. After much practice they at length discovered that the brain of any animal suffices to dress its skin. To sew those skins they use the tendons of animals beat and split into threads, and to pierce the skins they apply the bone of a heron's leg, sharpened like an awl. ”

“ It has the skin of the sides and flanks developed in just the same manner, and uses it in exactly the same way, leaping from a lofty bough, spreading its limbs at right angles to its body so that the skin is stretched out between them, and thus contriving to skim for long distances through the air. ”

“ The reader will observe the common use throughout the whole animal kingdom of the skin unmodified. Also that the special organs of the invertebrates, which number more than nine tenths of the whole, are quite limited to modifications of the skin; while those of vertebrates belong only to the alimentary canal. The description to follow will adhere to the order of the table:
Respiration by the Unmodified Skin and Food-Tract.—The general surface of the body has in all soft-skinned animals an aërating or respiratory action ”

“ The skin-muscles are well developed in those of the mammalia which have loose skins, as, for example, the hedgehog, porcupine, and porpoise. In the hedgehog, when the skin-muscles contract, the animal becomes rolled up as in a bag of muscles. ”

“ Mounting Dried Skins of Mammals.—Skins of mammals must be soaked in a strong solution of alum water, and when perfectly soft see that the parts above the lips, eyes, etc., are peeled down quite thin, and that every portion of the skin is perfectly pliable, then it should be moistened as described. ”

“ The skin should be a clear color (yellow being preferred in the American market) and free from blotches and pin feathers; if it looks tight and drawn, the bird has probably been scalded before being plucked. The flesh should be neither flabby nor stiff, but should give evenly and gently when pressed by the finger. ”

“ And they were, indeed, these thick-skinned animals, with a big head, a large, swollen snout, a mouth armed with teeth which extend a foot beyond it—animals which are squat on their short limbs, the skin of which, unprovided with hair, is of a tawny red. ”

“ I would advise every one to hold the birds in the easiest position to themselves. Be careful to keep the feathers from touching the flesh. A very good plan is to work with a small plug of cotton wool, pressing the skin from the body with it, but bear in mind that a bird's skin is very thin and delicate, not like an opossum's, which you can pull right off the body without a break. Having skinned down to the legs, take first one then the other and insert your fingers inside the skin and push it back, thus showing the second joint where it has been previously broken or disjointed. ”