462 Thayer, Concealing Coloration. Loct. 



others. If any doubter would, for instance, place an artificial bird 

 the size of a peacock up in the sunlit trees, and try to color it so 

 that it would show less in the first twenty different situations he tried 

 for it, than a real stuffed (or live) peacock proved to show, he 

 would begin to learn something that he has never yet dreamed of. 



Hummingbirds are a beautiful demonstration of the fact that 

 even almost constant conspicuousncss is no evidence that the costume 

 of a species is not obliterative. On the contrary, it will soon be 

 recognized that the very climaxes of obliterative coloration are 

 to be found, just where one would expect, among the very species 

 whose activities condemn them to the greatest conspicuousness. 

 A feeding hummer's incessant motion makes him practically one 

 of the most conspicuous of birde; and yet, behold, when you place 

 a still one anywhere amidst the same flowers, you discover that 

 he is as exquisitely effaced by background reproduction as any 

 barkmoth or wood frog. The very same thing is true of the 

 flamingo, the zebra, the peacock, and, of course, the world of 

 species of which these happen to seem to us to be climaxes. 



Now, as soon as the objecting naturalists understand that by 

 conceal in g-coloration our book means coloration that works where 

 it is most needed, and not necessarily elsewhere, and when their 

 attention has been called to the fact that the more the butterfly 

 or hummer matches the flower-masses where he has to risk his life 

 the more he must show elsewhere, they will have begun to study. 

 On the sea, when Dr. Townsend detected all the white-backed male 

 eiders, and not the brown females, the flock was in dark water, 

 probably between him and the cliff. At sea, there is almost all 

 the time a dark direction and a light one, according to the sky, — 

 silvery water to port and dark to starboard. In the one the white 

 eiders vanish, in the other, if it be excessively dark, the brown ones 

 are the dimmest, but, to equal the perfect vanishing of the males 

 when they are in bright water, the females need to be seen in 

 actual cliff-reflection. Once out beyond these reflections, the 

 brown eiders on a calm sea are dark spots from almost every 

 view-point, while the white parts of the males totally disappear 

 whenever they are looked at toward the light. I too have seen 

 eiders, both American and European, the latter by hundreds; but 

 this was not necessary : any white birds on the sea will do, and the 

 case of old and young gulls is just as good to study. 



