Quoted by Henry McGhie, 'Images, Ideas, and Ideals: Thinking with and about Ross's Gull', in Thorsen et. al., Animals on Display (Penn. University Press, 2013), pp. 101-127.
Description:

'Murdoch... gives a good description of the challenges of preparing specimens (his first specimen of Ross's Gull was eaten by "Eskimo Dogs");

"Arctic taxidermy has its drawbacks. The carpenter's shop, where I had to work, would not warm up in spite of the little Sibley stove in it, and by the time I had a skin turned inside out and the skull cleaned, the skin would be so stiff from freezing that it would not turn back, and I used to have to warm it at the stove before I could finish the skin. Besides the metal top, which our commanding officer thought was such a neat and cleanly thing to put on my skinning table, used to become uncomfortably numbing to the fingers."' (107)

'During the 1881-83 expedition to Point Barrow, John Murdoch and colleagues had secured and prepared more than one hundred specimens of Ross's Gull at a time when there were around fifteen specimens around the world. Murdoch wrote that another naturalist (Elliot Coues) "half seriously took me to task for 'vulgarizing this beautiful bird.'" Murdoch was forbidden from publicizing the number of specimens collected, in case the Smithsonian was overwhelmed with requestsm although it is equally likely that the Smithsonian did not want the rare specimens to be devalued.' (110)