| Popis: |
The collecting of mammals in the field is a task that entails much time and equipment if first class specimens are to be prepared. It is necessary to spend a great deal of time skinning and making up the skins. Then, too, adequate apparatus must be at hand to pin out the specimens to dry, to keep them from crowding and thus damaging each other, and to protect them from flies, beetles, and other pests. This apparatus for pinning the skins takes up much room, and is always bulky. Sometimes the mammalogist may take a trip that is not primarily in the interest of mammals, and will not have time nor space to do any extensive collecting, yet even then he is always tempted to set a few traps no matter where he goes. But trapping is useless if lack of time does not permit the skinning of the catch. By using one or more of the methods outlined below it is possible to preserve the mammals caught on such trips in a temporary manner. Later, the next winter, perhaps, the mammals may be skinned and made up. The following methods are not recommended, then, to take the place of the usual ones on a regular collecting trip, but become most useful when one does not have time enough to prepare skins, yet time enough to do at least some collecting. Then, an incidental advantage of these methods is the killing of any disease organisms, such as the causative agents of tularemia or bubonic plague, which are sometimes a real danger to the mammalogist as he skins the specimens he catches. |
