504 Allen, The Concealing Coloration Question, Loct. 



marks as of necessity advertising in function. Mr. Thayer, him- 

 self, as I have pointed out, in rejecting the theory of recognition- 

 marks fails to see that it is by no means incompatible with his own 

 ideas. There are other cases where it seems to me that his views 

 and those of his opponents are not irreconcilable. One of these 

 is that of a particular class of recognition-marks which under 

 t;ertain conditions are probably advertising and which, indeed, 

 ^eem to owe their usefulness as recognition-marks to their revealing 

 power. These are the so-called banner-marks of deer, antelopes, 

 rabbits, etc. 



Thayer's treatment of these white stern-patches I have thought 

 to be the weakest link in his chain of evidence and argument. 

 His claim that the deer's white flag, for instance, is actually a con- 

 cealing mark is one of the hardest for us to admit of all the claims 

 he has made. The banner-mark theory, for one thing, was such 

 a neat and satisfactory one and seemed so thoroughly to ' fill 

 the bill ' that we dislike to give it up. Any fair-minded and un- 

 prejudiced person, however, who will take the trouble to try experi- 

 ments, or who can see the logic of the situation, must admit that, 

 seen against the sky, in the long run the white must prove to be 

 concealing rather than revealing. The difficulty lies in convincing 

 ourselves that the flag would actually be seen against the sky most 

 of the time rather than against foliage or a hillside. I must con- 

 fess that I have not yet tried enough experiments to assure myself 

 on this point. What little I have done goes to indicate that 

 Thayer may be right. My idea would be to take from time to 

 time in the woods the point of view of panther or wolf and see 

 whether the interstices in the foliage at the height of a deer's 

 tail at varying distances were numerous enough to spot the land- 

 scape pretty thoroughly with glimpses of the sky. It must be 

 borne in mind that it is not necessary to concealment that the 

 white flag should actually relieve against the sky; if it appears 

 among a number of scattered sky spots so that it does not attract 

 attention to itself to the exclusion of other things in the neighbor- 

 hood, that is quite sufficient. I recommend that this experiment 

 be tried before we indulge in any more ridicule of Mr. Thayer's 

 lack of ' common sense ' in this matter. 



But if our experiments prove that Thayer is right as to the con- 



