ANIMAL COUNTERFEITS. 243 



of the organic world. A hundred years ago they said the hills are clothed 

 in green and the valley bedecked with flowers solely to please man's eye 

 for color. The poet says that "Full many a rose is born to blush un- 

 seen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air." I take it that the re- 

 lations of plant and insect life thousands of years before man's appear- 

 ance on the globe were much the same as to-day, and that an intelligent 

 understanding of these facts will add largely to man's enjoyment of na- 

 ture. Is not the pleasure of intellectual insight into nature of even higher 

 order than the gratification of the sense of sight and smell." So color 

 must be studied with the good of the race always in view. 



In general animals wear colors that harmonize well with their sur- 

 roundings. This arrangement may serve one of two important purposes 

 and sometimes both. The most obvious use is that of the case just 

 cited, where concealment is most desirable and necessary for protection 

 of the animal sought by stronger animals for food. The other case is 

 easily explained in the case of the polar bear. He has no enemy but 

 hunger and his coloraton enables him to steal upon his prey unobserved. 

 The advantages of protective coloration are still more clearly brought 

 out by the examples of those animals which change their color with change 

 of season. The Rocky Mountain goats live always on or near the snow. 

 They remain white throughout the seasons but the ptarmigan changes 

 to match the ground in summer and the snows in winter. The weasel 

 and many other animals change their coat with the seasons. 



We find in insects some of the most marvelous instances of coloration. 

 It is well known that green larvae usually feed upon green leaves and 

 brown larvae rest upon brown stems. The cocons of moths are some- 

 times wrapped in leaves and the naked crysalids of various butterflies 

 resemble dried leaves. The common walking stick, as it is well called, 

 while a common insect of the fleld is seldom seen owing to its almost per- 

 fect resemblance to the twigs upon which it rests. The measuring 

 worms, as they are called, more properly the larvae of grometrid moths, 

 have not only the color of the plant upon which they rest, but when dis- 

 turbed they hold to the stem with their abdominal feet, and, stiffening 

 themselves at an appropriate angle to the stem, look precisely like the 

 petiole of a leaf or a broken branch. It is a truly interesting experiment 

 to tap a plant upon which they are feeding and note how rigid they be- 

 come and how perfectly they assume the proper attitude. After a few 

 minutes they will slowly unbend and become living larvae once more. 

 "Who has not walked through a forest and seen the brilliantly colored cato- 

 cala moth flit an instant before his face and apparently disappear when 

 he alights upon the tree trunk? As interesting a disappearance is that 

 of the coralwing locust who flies with a gaudy flash of red or yellow and 

 drops into the dust in the road to all appearances as lifeless as the clods 

 around him. It is often necessary to scare him up many times before 

 you are able to detect the dust colored form crouching in the dust, ready 

 for a spring. So we might continue to name hundreds of familiar cases 

 of protective coloration among animals. Besides, especially those birds 

 which nest on the ground are protectively colored. We have all experienced 

 the thrill of seeing a nighthawk get up from under our feet. You may 



