Ever since I was a schoolgirl, when I would spend long afternoons in the Newark Museum and the American Museum of Natural History, I have loved the examples of taxidermy more than anything else on display.

Men have been stuffing animal skins for hundreds of years, yet the art of taxidermy -- mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study -- was not perfected until the early 20th century. That is when the proper materials and methods of artistic preservation were discovered and developed by a small group of talented naturalists.

At Skylands, my house in Maine, I amassed quite a few examples of fine old taxidermy that I found in shops, at auctions, and at local garage sales. The stairway is occupied by a few superb taxidermic examples: ducks, geese, a turkey, a bird, and a baby black bear.