90 Barbour, The Case of Roosevelt vs. Thayer, [j^ k 



feeds down wind to water holes and thick covers, and. in fact, takes 

 not the slightest precaution for his own safety. 



Those observations seem to be absolutely all that we know 

 regarding the relations which the habits of the lions and the zebras 

 hoar to one another. It is hard to fit in any clause relating to 

 protective coloring which would seem to be capable o( support by 

 observations, to account for more than the fact that Mr. Thayer 



h;is been able to coneeal dummy /.obras successfully in New Hani}) 



shire under various conditions of his own arrangement. We are 

 all mentally prone to inferential methods, this is a common failing 

 of the human mind, and one to which an artist dealing with physical 

 ami mechanical phenomena naturally would be very prone. The 

 artist dealing only with the visible and the superficial would 

 naturally turn to the arguments of pure logic rather than to animal 

 experimentation. He lives in an Arcadian land where no conflict 

 o\ tacts or deeply concealed natural laws concern him in the least. 

 The obvious and the all embracing theories are the ones that appeal 

 to him most. We have often pondered on how color patterns may 

 have originated. Mr. Thayer has doubtless done the same thing. 

 His theories demand that we should admit the existence of a con- 

 stant inter-specific struggle and a selections! value for incomplete 

 color schemes, but we feel grave doubts as to the efficacy of natural 

 selection alone in bringing about the species of the present time. 

 Mr. Agassi/, often said that natural selection probably explained 

 the survival but not the arrival of species. One cannot account 

 for the arrival of a new organ nor the loss of an old one by Darwin- 

 ian selection alone. The question of the origin of new characters 

 in general is a problem of the greatest depth and importance, ami 

 one that is here out of place, yet how especially difficult is it to 

 imagine with Thayer's reasoning the origin of a new color pattern 

 of doubtful value when complete, and of mi selectional importance 

 in its elemental state. 



We find birds o( such varying types of colorations, living under 

 the same conditions as far as the operation of broad selectional 

 principles are concerned, that it is fair to assume that all cannot be 

 equally protected. There are in the upper leaf zones of the tropical 

 forest, birds of which the following are but a few of the colors 

 displayed in their plumages. One may iiud white birds and black 



