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Dog owners consider it an honor to have dogs accepted for the Whitney Collection. Few people would stuff their grandfathers (though Enrico Caruso, embalmed, still lies on view in Rome) but the idea of preserving well-loved pets as they looked in life is more attractive. So far 72 dogs, all of different breeds, have been accepted for Yale. Many are still living but places are reserved for them.
First dog in the Whitney Collection was 0. B. Oilman's Idahurst Lofty, considered the best cocker spaniel in America. Nearby stands Bernice of White Isle, a near perfect bloodhound and Togo, Alas kan sled dog. Togo is the only non-champion admitted. He won fame sledging serum with Leonhard Seppala to diphtheria infected Nome (TIME, Feb. 9, 1925). Mrs. Kaare Nansen, the onetime Mrs. Edward P. Ricker, dog racer of Poland Springs, Me. gave Togo to the museum.
Other great dogs already mounted, or in process of preparation, or accepted but still living include:
Pendley Calling of Blarney Blarney, John Grenville Bates's wire-haired fox terrier which twice was best dog in Madi son Square Garden shows.
Blue Dan of Happy Valley, Dr. Arthur Alan Mitten's English setter, often a best-dog-in-show.
Lord Laund Loyalty of Bellehaven, Mrs. Florence B. Ilch's collie.
Inglehurst Joker, Charles Inglees' Gordon setter.
The "Yale" bulldog of the collection is Harry W. Lindsey's Maple Springs Laddy Boy.
Last week Ralph Carr Morrill, Peabody Museum taxidermist, was putting last touches to what remains of Ador Tipp Topp, Great Dane. When he reached the museum, Champion Ador Tipp Topp was treated as his predecessors were and his followers will be. He was carefully measured and sketched. Then Mr. Morrill smeared his head with vaseline to get a plaster cast. Next he was skinned. While a tanner prepared the skin, the museum's osteologists cleaned and set up his skeleton. Meanwhile, Taxidermist Morrill made a burlap & papier mache model of Ador Tipp Topp's body. On this dummy the taxidermist glued the tanned skin, sewed up seams, inserted made-to-order glass eyes. After a little further grooming Ador Tipp Topp stood last week as big and alert as ever he looked at a kennel show.
Unique Replica
Long ago when States bickered, Illinoisians annoyed Iowans with a noisy derisive jingle:
Here's to the American eagle,
That great bird of prey,
That nests in Illinoy
And flits over Ioway*
Last week Iowans could thumb derision back at Illinoisians across the Mississippi. At Iowa City Iowa had the only stuffed replica in the world of a dodo.
Portuguese explorers found the dodo on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius when they reached there in 1505. The sailors considered the dodo a very stupid bird (doudo is Portuguese for stupid, foolish). It was larger than a turkey. It could not fly. Nor did it run when chased. Its flesh was nauseous. Man and the hogs he later imported to Mauritius exterminated the dodo in the 1680s. Not for two centuries did naturalists collect enough bones of the extinct bird to reconstruct its skeleton. There were no remnants of its flesh left after that lapse, and very few of its feathers. But enough pictures and written descriptions existed to satisfy bookish students of natural history.
Director Homer Ray Dill of the Uni versity of Iowa Museum, who originated college courses of taxidermy and museum work, several years ago conceived the idea of restoring a dodo in the round, as a tour de force in taxidermy (see cut). His dodo with its relatively short wings, its chunky body and its tufted tail looks like a monstrously big duckling with a gull's bill. Actually the dodo, despite its looks, was a kind of pigeon.
* Iowa's Great Seal carries a flying eagle, Illinois' Great Seal a perched eagle.