I made no reply to the jests which followed, but silently hung the kangaroo by its hind legs to the branch of a tree. I then made a small incision in the skin, and inserting the mouth of the syringe forced air with all my might between the skin and the body of the animal. By degrees the hide of the kangaroo distended, altering the shape of the creature entirely. Still I worked on, forcing in yet more air until it had become a mere shapeless mass, and I soon found that the skin was almost entirely separated from the carcass. A bold cut down the belly, and a few touches here and there where the ligatures still bound the hide to the body, and the animal was flayed. "What a splendid plan!" cried the boys; "but why should it do it?" "For a most simple and natural reason," I replied; "do you not know that the skin of an animal is attached to its flesh merely by slender and delicate fibers, and that between these exist thousands of little bladders or air chambers; by forcing air into these bladders the fibers are stretched, and at length, elastic as they are, cracked. The skin has now nothing to unite it to the body, and, consequently, may be drawn off with perfect ease. This scientific fact has been known for many years; the Greenlanders make constant use of it; when they have killed a seal or walrus, they distend the skin that they may tow the animal more easily ashore, and then remove its hide at a moment's notice." The remaining animals were subjected to the same treatment, and, to my great joy, in a couple of days the skins were all off, and being prepared for use. I now summoned the boys to assist me in procuring blocks of wood for my crushing machine, and the following day we set forth with saws, ropes, axes, and other tools. We soon reached the tree I had selected for my purpose, and I began by sending Fritz and Jack up into the tree with axes to cut off the larger of the high branches that, when the tree fell, it might not injure its neighbors. They then descended, and Fritz and I attacked the stem. As the easiest and most speedy method we used a saw, such a one as is employed by sawyers in a saw-pit, and Fritz taking one end and I the other, the tree was soon cut half through. We then adjusted ropes that we might guide its fall, and again began to cut. It was laborious work, but when I considered that the cut was sufficiently deep we took the ropes and pulled with our united strength. The trunk cracked, swayed, tottered, and fell with a crash. The boughs were speedily lopped off, and the trunk sawed into blocks four feet long. To cut down and divide this tree had taken us a couple of days, and on the third we carted home four large and two small blocks, and with the vertebræ joints of the whale I, in a very short time, completed my machine.