["Auk 

 \/±Q Correspondence. LJan. 



resistance follows by the turkey struggling to get free. This latter attempt 

 is invariably defeated from the fact that the cord employed is so long that 

 it allows the hooked bird to run about, without ever thinking to pull 

 the long twine taut with the view of making the effort to tear the hook out, 

 -an almost impossible feat at the best, especially if the bait has been 

 entirely swallowed. Loose corn is always sprinkled around for several 

 yards in all directions over the ground where the hook end of the string 

 is set This tends to deceive the feeding birds, and, sooner or later, one 

 of them is pretty sure to pick up and swallow the one on the hook, and is 

 at once made fast, Later on the negro will bag him by a knock on the 

 head with the stick carried for the purpose. There is nothing to prevent 

 baiting several localities in this way on the same day and evening, or 

 setting several baits in any particularly good place where, in former times, 

 a flock of turkeys were known to assemble. ._„... 



With this brief account of the Wild Turkey's destruction in Virginia I 

 close my remarks, and pass them over to our protectors of birds in this 



country. 



Faithfully yours, 



R. W. Shufeldt. 



Washington, D. C. 

 31 Oct., 1910. 



Concealing Coloration. 



To the Editors of 'The Auk':— f 



Dear Sirs' — Now is the season for country readers of The Auk to 

 notice how the snow-covered roofs of houses match the sky and are often 

 all day, and generally all night, indistinguishable from the sky Were 

 men taller than these roofs, and were the snow confined to the roofs while 

 the earth remained dark, they would see them against this dark ground 

 and find them conspicuous just as they now do white birds, etc., that they 

 commonly look down upon. Apparently naturalists are the only class 

 of men who do not here recognize a principle that must of course apply to 

 all white upward-facing surfaces seen against the sky. In England, in 

 the Norfolk Broads, dark sails are now in use, because white ones did not 

 show against the sky, and caused many collisions at night (Dark sails 

 are common in the harbors of many countries.) Yet while these navi- 

 gators thus show their knowledge of the invisibility of white against the 

 sky many naturalists still insist that white birds and other white or white- 

 topped animals that need to be invisible against the sky are conspicuous 

 from all view-points. 



At the recent meeting of the A. O. U. I gave a short series of out-door 

 demonstrations of the fact that the completeness of an animal s conceahng- 

 coloration depends upon his wearing samples of all the characteristic 

 details of his back-ground. First I showed that a simple counter-shading 

 conceals an object when it reproduces the one tone of a plain back-ground. 



