oOd Allen, The Concealing Coloration Question. [oct. 



In the case of those species which make evident displays of brightly 

 colored parts, it is particularly indicated. But colors and mark- 

 ings that are so made use of in the close quarters of courtship are 

 not necessarily conspicuous to enemies or prey at a distance or 

 which if in close proximity are not already aware of the presence 

 of their wearers. 



But I shall go no farther at present into this subject of concealing 

 coloration. This paper is not intended as a complete review of 

 Mr. Thayer's book nor even of Colonel Roosevelt's paper. I 

 simply have not been contented to let things stand as Barbour, 

 Phillips, and Roosevelt have left them, because I believe that, 

 in their anxiety lest Thayer's 'heresies' should be too widely 

 accepted, they have failed to do justice to his work. I think it 

 must be admitted, even by those of us who are most appreciative 

 of Mr. Thayer's work, that he has not yet proved his main conten- 

 tion. That is, he has not convinced us beyond a reasonable doubt 

 that all coloration of animals has a concealing function and owes 

 its existence to natural selection. I will not say that this is insus- 

 ceptible of proof, but other ways of accounting for certain colora- 

 tions seem fairly satisfactory as yet. Nevertheless, Mr. Thayer 

 has shown us several things that we had not seen before, most 

 important of which, doubtless, is the use of counter-shading, though 

 hardly less so is the possibility of bright colors as well as neutral 

 tints being actually concealing in effect. I think that no one can 

 read his book carefully and study his pictures or witness his experi- 

 ments and denionstrations, no one can experiment for himself 

 out of doors in a leafy and sunlit landscape, without becoming 

 convinced that nature is full of brilliant colors that can be matched 

 only by correspondingly bright hues in the birds. Mr. Thayer's 

 book comes very near being a work of genius, and I submit that 

 scientific men can ill afford to treat it lightlv. 



When the foregoing paper was read (in a somewhat different 

 form) at a meeting of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, March 18, 

 1912, one of the members, a leading ornithologist and a Fellow 

 of the A. 0. U., stated that he doubted the necessity of protective 

 coloration; that he considered the wariness and intelligence of 



