472 Allen, Roosevelt on Concealing Coloration. LOct. 



ROOSEVELT'S 'REVEALING AND CONCEALING COLORA- 

 TION IN BIRDS AND MAMMALS.' 



BY J. A. ALLEN. 



L t nder this title 1 Mr. Roosevelt presents a critical and extended 

 review of the Messrs. G. H. and Abbott H. Thayer's book entitled 

 ' Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom,' published early 

 in 1910. 2 In this book, he says: "The doctrine of concealing 

 coloration as an explanation of almost every kind of coloration 

 in the animal kingdom has received its widest application. . . In 

 its extreme form as stated by these gentlemen, the doctrine 

 seems to me to be pushed to such a fantastic extreme and to 

 include such wild absurdities as to call for the application of 

 common sense thereto. The Messrs. Thayer state their position 

 in the most positive form. Fundamentally it is that, in the first 

 place, all or practically all animals are concealingly colored, and 

 in the next place, that while their patterns in all cases help thus 

 to conceal them the chief factor in their concealment is the counter- 

 gradation of shades, their inconspicuousness being due, not to their 

 color being like that of the surrounding objects, but to this counter- 

 gradation causing them to escape being seen at all. In order to 

 show the sweeping claims made by the Messrs. Thayer, and ac- 

 cepted by their followers, I quote their exact language:" (Here 

 follows a page or more of quotations from their book.) 



"Before discussing these positions and the argument advanced 

 on behalf of them by the Messrs. Thayer," continues Mr. Roosevelt, 

 " I wish to call attention to certain arguments of theirs, both in the 

 shape of pictures and in the shape of letter-press, which are really 

 not arguments at all, properly so considered, but are simply mis- 

 statements of facts, or wild guesses put forward as facts. I do not 

 for a moment suppose that the misstatements are intentional on 

 the part of the Messrs. Thayer. I believe that they are due to the 

 enthusiasm of a certain type of artistic temperament, an enthusiasm 



i Revealing and Concealing Coloration in Birds and Mammals. By Theodore 

 Roosevelt. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. XXX, pp. 119-231, August 23, 

 1911. Price, 60 cents. Address, Librarian, American Museum of Natural History. 



' Noticed in this journal. Vol. XXVII, April, 1910, pp. 222-225. 



