CONCEALIXG COLORATION 



21 



could now see the deer, and all agreed that it was these white stripes 

 that had fooled them. Dr. C. Hart Merriam said it was a most con- 

 elusive demonstration (though he still believed that such marks exist 

 also for purposes of display, under other conditions). 



The way this deer demonstration brings to instant ridicule the 

 extraordinarily positive statements of Theodore Eoosevelt must set the 

 reader wondering about the value of the remainder of his attack. The 

 simple fact is that Eoosevelt, like most of the rest of the world, is 

 totally ignorant of a great optical principle which has lain right under 

 people's noses, and to whiqh I have at last called attention, and which 

 can not possibly remain ignored. All the various objections and doubts 

 about our book, including this extraordinary tirade of Eoosevelt's, have 

 been possible only because of people's not seeing this principle. 



The principle 3 is, basally, merely this : that if you lie on the floor 

 you will have not the floor but the ceiling to look at, while if you were 

 fastened to the ceiling you would see not the ceiling but the floor. All 

 over this planet, and all over every other planet that receives light-vibra- 

 tions and possesses detached objects of any sort, either on or above its 

 surface, this law rules the aspect of every object in its appearance from 

 the view-point of each other object. All such detached objects are for- 



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This diagram shows that Roosevelt is again exactly wrong when he says that to 

 the lower-leveled eye of a wolf or cougar, a prongbuck's white rump shows now 

 against the sky and now below it, according to this enemy's distance. If the ante- 

 lope's rump is above the cougar's eye the same proportion of it will show against the 

 cougar's sky at one distance as at another. 



3 Erasmus Darwin perceived this principle, but got confused in carrying it 

 out — trying to make it explain the juxtaposition of brown backs and white 

 bellies; the white of the bellies being, he thought, nature's attempt to match 

 the white of the sky, for eyes beneath. Of course this under white can not do 

 that, being always in shadow, and therefore practically dark brown — utterly too 

 dark to match the over-head sky. On the other hand, white patterns on animals' 

 upper slopes obey in every respect the law he foresaw, and operate upon the 

 sight of such beholders as look from a lower level, except, of course, when the 

 wearer is directly over them. 



