494 Allen, The Concealing Coloration Question. [oct. 



it is not so common, how can he prove it is as successful? He 

 speaks so frequently of one animal being as successful in life as 

 another that one comes to believe that he thinks all animals are 

 equally successful in life! 



On page 202, Roosevelt says that Thayer " states that a crouch- 

 ing hare is 'boldly conspicuous' when seen from the position of 

 any 'quadruped pursuer' that would have to look upwards at the 

 hare's tail," and then he goes on to ridicule Thayer and talk about 

 'preposterous theories' and 'wild absurdities' and use other 

 language which might be appropriate (though impolite) if Thayer 

 had said anything of the kind. In reality, however, Roosevelt 

 has made a flagrant misquotation. What Thayer actually said was 

 that the crouching hare was "boldly conspicuous when seen from 

 the position of a mouse or cricket." ^ Now I do not suppose that 

 Roosevelt would really call a mouse, or even a cricket, a ' quadruped 

 pursuer' of the hare! It is obvious that his eagerness to punch 

 Mr. Thayer has led him into a grossly careless misreading of him. 



Another ill-considered statement occurs on page 218, where he 

 says, " Birds and mammals living under precisely the same condi- 

 tions have totally different types of coloration, and display totally 

 different traits and habits when seeking to escape from enemies 

 or to capture prey." Of course, a very little reflection would 

 have shown him that no two species ever live under precisely the 

 same conditions. The very fact of their having different habits 

 in seeking to escape enemies or to capture prey constitutes a 

 difference in the conditions of their lives. 



But the most serious of all the misreadings of Thayer that we 

 find in Roosevelt's paper has to do with counter-shading. He 

 entirely overlooks the fact that Thayer's claims for the efficacy of 

 counter-shading concern only those natural backgrounds which 

 the animal resembles in color, or, to quote from page 15 of Thayer's 

 book, it is "when seen against a background of color and pattern 

 like its own" that the counter-shaded animal "will be essentially 

 indistinguishable at a short distance." Overlooking this, Roose- 

 velt says, on page 136, "Mr. Thayer insists that the animal escapes 

 observation, not because its colors match its surroundings, or 



' Concealing- Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, motto to Fig, 103, opp. p. 150. 



