Field Museum as chief of the Department of Taxidermy. Before leaving Milwaukee I had been working on an idea of four deer groups, to be called the "Four Seasons," to show the animals in natural surroundings of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. I collected a good deal of the necessary material and put a lot of work on the project in my own shop, and finally reached a point where it became necessary for me to know whether the museum was going to want the groups or not. I approached the curator of zoölogy. He said that he would recommend the purchase of one of the four. Later I saw the president of the museum. After some discussion he asked why it was that the museum couldn't have the four groups. I gave him every assurance that it could. I spent four years on these four groups. It wouldn't take so long now but at that time we had not only to make the groups but also to perfect the methods of doing it at the same time. Four years is a long time to take on four deer groups, but the number of things in taxidermy we worked out in doing those groups made it a very full four years' work. In fact, the method finally used for mounting those deer groups is the method still in use.
Briefly, that method is this: For each animal a rough armature was made, on which a life-sized clay model was shaped just like a clay model made for casting in bronze except that to facilitate accuracy the skull and leg bones of the animal were used. This model was checked by measurements made of the dead animal in the field, by photographs, and fre-
