The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1894-10-13
MOUNTING THE HORSE LINUS.
How This Feat in Taxidermy Was
Accomplished.
BY G. F. Newell, of Calais-Description
of the Process-Great Care Exercised.


of the Process-Great Care Exercised.
Especial to the Press.1
Calais, Oct. II. The horse Linus, of the
phenomenally long tail and name, died
last June at Calais. The owner, Mr..
Charles Eaton, employed Mr.. C. f. Newell,
the Calais taxidermist, to mount the
valuable animal, and to spare no pains
or expense in the process.
This remarkable horse had name tt
was IA feet long, a tail little over IL
feet long and foretop ten feet long. 1t
was nines,years old when it died and
weighed 1435 pounds 1t had a hand
some coat of very short hair and was of
shapely build.
AS far as we have been able to learn
this is the first and only horse ever
stuffed in this State, and as it was an
extraordinary animal and is to be pre-
served as natural freak the following
description of the method employed in
mounting it is of special interest. In
fact this is the first horse east of New
York ever mounted by what is called
the Dermoplastic method. The first
step was the taking of careful measure
ment of the dead horse as follows.
Height of shoulder, from the bottom
of the hoof. Length of body ION the
back, from base of skull to root of tail.
/ Length OF body along the side. Length
of neck from chest to base OF skull.
Length of thigh. Circumference of neck
s,-1 LoI 10 nh ha
chest. circumference of body close to
hind legs and from one thigh bone in a
half circle across back to the other.
Circumference of fore and hind legs in
three different places. Length of the
humerus and femur bones. Length of
bone ct tail. circumference of head in
three places. Then a drawing of the
horse was made from the above meas
urements. Then the skin was removed
with the utmost care. Besides the
taxidermist, it took one man to hold
the horses legs and three to turn it over.
The skin came off very nicely. The leg
bones were unjointed at the fetlock, and
the rest of the bones taken out separate
ly. They were all cleaned and poisoned
and wired together again into skele-
ton, over which the mannikin" of the
body was built in the exact shape of
the original flesh. The tail and name
were removed from the skin, combed.
braided and packed away in bags until
needed. The skin was put in vat of
strong alum and salt and left there "a
hours, then into vat of alum, salt and
saltpetre and kept constantly in motion
therein for 36 hours 1t was then put in
a warm bath of alum and salt and left
over night, and the next day put into
another bath Of alum, salt and corrosive
subimate solution, the latter being the
only reliable poison known for animal
skins. If arsenic is used the hair of the
specimen soon begins to get rusty and
has dead look. The skin was left in
this solution until thoroughly tanned,
and not single hair was lost, much to
the owners satisfaction, as he had been
told that more or less of them would
come out. 1t has been some times
stated that this horse's remark able name
and tail were false. The taxidermist de-
and washed and combed and braided it,
he knows it to be genuine. Besides
what animal has hairs like horse's, ~
and IA feet long that could be used, and
it would be impossi BILE to join several
hairs of other horses together so that it
could not be detected.
The building of the plank and iron
- he 81 ~
difficult and delicate task and required
great deal Of mechanical skill to get
it to correspond exactly to the measure
ments of the horses body.
Over this frame and skeleton the
substitute for the flesh was placed, con-
sisting of excelsior and straw, wound
around the ribs and other bones and
finely bound with Irvine. The whole
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