Whenever I killed a bird of which I did not know the name, I would fasten it up to some sticks in as life-like manner as possible, and make a water colour drawing of it, taking great care to shew every detail, so that in time I had over thirty drawings, each of which took me half a day to execute.  These are now in the writer’s possession, and form a pretty memento of his Crusoe days.

I took to making these drawings, because my attempts at taxidermy were grotesquely ludicrous; to put it plainly, they were unmitigated failures.  These remarks apply to my very early attempts, for I would not have the readers think me incapable after long practice of turning out a shapely bird or a fish fair to behold.  I must own that my early struggles at skinning and stuffing were certainly funny, as except from the colour of the feathers one could not tell a tern from a Kentish crow after I had mangled it about for a few hours.  They were wonders of natural history these specimens of mine, not altogether from my unskilfulness in handling them, but from the fact that I lacked materials to work with.  During the long nights of autumn, I, to a certain extent, perfected myself in setting up specimens, but found they would not keep, as I had no arsenic to work with, using in its place a disinfectant which was not a preservative, consequently my specimens began to get mouldy and to smell high, and this prevailing mustiness brought them to an untimely end, or at least the greater portion of them.  Thinking a day in the sunshine and fresh air might improve them, I took them all out of the house, and carried them a few at a time down to the small lawn, as it was nice and open, placing them promiscuously down on the green sward; and a funny lot they looked.  Fish of all kinds, condition, and colors, and birds in all positions, natural and unnatural; the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks was a pleasant sight in comparison to my collection, at least that was the impression I gleaned from “Begum” and “Flap,” both of whom seemed perfectly mad at seeing such an array of scarecrows on their favourite playground.

It was a lovely mild day, and I spent best part of it at La Fauconnaire, rabbit and gull shooting, bringing home for my day’s sport as many as I could fairly carry.  Leaving them in the storehouse I fed “Eddy,” and proceeded to perform the same office for the goat and pigs, but they were nowhere to be seen.  After a fair amount of searching I gave them up for the time, and proceeded to take in my stuffed wonders, but alas, the pigs and goat had been before me, for in the morning I had not properly latched the lawn gate, and they had got in and created awful havoc.  Many of my specimens the pigs had actually eaten, others they had disjointed and mangled in such a manner as to be perfectly useless, while what they had not fallen foul of my Quixotic goat had, by spiking them with her single horn, till she had had the satisfaction of knocking the stuffing out of them.  What was left of my most magnificent collection now looked as if a charge of dynamite had played havoc with it.  Thus my friends and the world in general were prevented from gazing upon one of the most curious collections of birds, beasts, and fishes that have ever been stuffed (with whatever was handiest) since the art of taxidermy was introduced.