A very large manikin may be made hollow in the manner represented in the accompanying plate (Plate IX.), which is self-explanatory. This is often desirable to avoid making the figure too heavy, as would be the case were the entire bulk to be made a solid mass of excelsior. For the smaller buffaloes, I made the bodies of excelsior alone. Each side was built up separately by driving a row of nails along the top of the centre board, and another along the bottom to carry the twine over in binding on the layers of excelsior. At the last, these nails were driven home.
During all this process the skin has been tried on the manikin from time to time, to make sure that the structure is of the right size in every respect. Beginners nearly always make a manikin too large, especially in circumference.
It is the commonest trick in the world for legs and necks to be made so large they have to be reduced. If a skin does not fit when it is tried on, the manikin is generally to blame, though sometimes the skin is badly shrunken, and requires to be further thinned down to make it more elastic. It is easy enough to make a manikin larger or higher, especially on the hind quarters, even while the skin is being put on for the last time; but woe to him whose manikin is _too large_ at the last moment. That means serious delay.
When the manikin is finished at every point, shear it all over with a large pair of shears to clip off the ends of the wisps of excelsior, and then poison the skin thoroughly on the inside with arsenical soap, and on the outside with arsenic water, if the hair be long. While the poison is being absorbed, mix up enough clay to cover the entire animal with a coat an eighth or a quarter of an inch thick, and smear it on with the hand. Have it soft and pasty, so that it will rub into the excelsior, and catch hold of it. If the clay is too stiff, it will neither spread nor stick.
[Illustration: PLATE VIII. MANIKIN FOR TIGER.--COMPLETED.]
When the manikin has been fully covered with clay from end of nose to tip of tail, not a single inch of surface having been missed, you then have a complete clay statue of the animal, except the feet. Now put the skin over and adjust it carefully. Leave no air-bubbles under it. Catch it together between the fore legs, hind legs, under the belly, the throat and neck, and around the legs, and make it fit everywhere. Then begin at the feet and sew it up with short, strong stitches in the manner already described, shaping and filling out wherever necessary, as you go. On a large mammal it is very desirable for two persons to work at the same time, to keep the skin from drying up prematurely. Of course, the skin must be kept wrapped up in wet cloths until finished. Finish all the legs first, and then the body. You can actually model the skin down upon the body, and it will not only take the exact form of the manikin--every depression and every elevation--but it will also _keep_ it. If there is too much skin on one side of the animal, work it together with your hand, and coax it to shrink until the superfluous skin is distributed over the animal, and finally disappears. Once, when mounting the skin of a Burchell's zebra in a peculiar attitude (at bay), I found that, owing to its elasticity, there was a superabundance of about ten inches of skin in front of the left hind leg, which was placed very far forward, under the body. But for the saving grace of a clay-covered manikin I should have been in a fix. As it was, I started in half-way up the neck, to work together and stow away the surplus skin from that point backward, and by the time I reached the seat of the difficulty (at the flank) the surplus skin was all taken up, and the side of the animal was as smooth and immaculate as if nothing had happened.