Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 May 1881 — Casts from Animals. [ARTICLE]

Casts from Animals.

“Takes it easy, don’t he?” said a sharp-eyed man, patting a long, winding mass of clay hanging over a bench. “ You don’t mean that it is alive ?” “ Well, I should say so. Look here,” he replied, and picking away a little clay at one end a bright, bead-like eye appeared, and a forked tongue that darted out for a second belonged to a rattlesnake. The cast-taker was Joe Palmer, employed by the Smithsonian Institution to restore* animals, etc. ( The qualifications of the animal sculptor who works from life models are varied. Artistic talent, a cool head and steady nerves are indispensable, especially when the subject is a rattlesnake or a copperhead. Reproducing a snake in clay in former times, and preserving lifelike proportions, was an immense work, many of the scales having to be worked over and over with instruments for the purpose ; but now the operation is much more simple, although dangerous. A living snake is chloroformed, and, after it is completely under the influence, placed on a iimb or in a coil, and plaster quickly put on. If it shows signs of conscicusness before the clay has hardened properly, more chloroform is given, and finally the cast is cut off and ready for the mold, which, when completed, is painted, making a perfect sac simile. The operation is not always conducted easily. A copperhead “ came to” one day suddenly, and, throwing the clay aside, made a dash for liberty that created a stampede. He was recaptured later. Among the larger animals are dolphins, porpoises, grampuses, and the white whale that was in the New York Aquarium. Twenty or thirty heads standing on the top of the cases in the Archaeological Holl attract considerable attention from the variety of expression shown. In one the lips are drawn tightly together, and determination is shown in every lineament. Another looks as if it had lost all hope ; while in others, fear, rage-, astonishment, disgust and dogged imperturbability are seen. They are the heads of a band of Indians that visited Washington several years ago, and were coaxed by the sculptor to undergo the process of cast taking. They all declined at first, but, the chit f finally consenting, the others followid suit, and their different emotions as they sat for an hour with their heads and faces plastered with clay (breathing through straws), are accurately recorded.— New York Sun.