498 Allex, The Concealing Coloration Question. [oct. 



refuses to accept. Another, but less important, issue is the cog- 

 nate one of sexual selection, which Roosevelt accepts, though 

 guardedly, l)ut Thayer rejects (implicitly if not explicitly) on the 

 ground that it implies conspicuous coloration, whereas he holds 

 that truly conspicuous coloration does not exist. We will revert 

 to this subject later on. 



The next important conclusion of Colonel Roosevelt is that "as 

 regards the majority of birds and mammals the prime factors in 

 securing their safety, are habit (including bodily capacity) if they 

 do not trust to concealment, and habit and cover if they do trust 

 to concealment."^ "Among these birds and mammals," he says, 

 " the coloration is always a minor, and often a negligible, factor." 

 Now no one doubts the importance of habit, bodily capacity, and 

 cover in protecting animals, but to me it seems an impossibility 

 to settle just what factor is most important. As a matter of fact 

 they are all interwoven, habit depending on coloration, capacity, 

 and cover, coloration depending on cover and habit, etc., etc., 

 so that it seems futile to think of one without the others. To dis- 

 cuss their relative importance would remind one of the discussions 

 in the old-time debating societies, and one might as well argue 

 the question whether the blood or the brain was the more necessary 

 to the life and welfare of man. Of course, when it comes to stating, 

 as Roosevelt does here, that coloration is often a negligible factor, 

 that is properly a matter for observation and argument, and 

 that is one of the points upon which Roosevelt's observations and 

 arguments must be weighed. 



Roosevelt's next important conclusion — and this, in fact, is 

 the sum and substance of his whole paper so far as it concerns our 

 birds — is that "a large majority, probably at least three fourths 

 or over, of the birds of temperate North America, have coloration 

 patterns which, either in whole or in part, either all the time in 

 both sexes, or all the time in one sex, or some of the time in one 

 sex, are advertising."^ In support of this conclusion he brings 

 an argument which may prove to be a strong one and well 

 founded. At least it has a certain plausibility and will bear inves- 

 tigation. This is the suggestion that the miscellaneous character 



' Op. cit., p. 214 (.5). 



