!CX1 , i Oil 



( orret ponaena •> ) J 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



The Concealing Coloration Question. 



Edi roH "i "] in. \i k ': 



Deai Sir: [ rise to a question of personal privilege. In tli<: last number 

 of ,- rii" A ul. ' ou > Editor and two corre pondenl eption to 



certain expri ions and certain tatementi contained in my paper on the 

 Concealing Coloration qui tion in the i ue for October) 1912. Such of 

 my language ae i declared unparliamentary I gladly withdraw, and for 

 it l tender my formal apologi i matter of fact, I did not realize 



thai I was employing a differenl kind of language from what bad been 

 . by othei in thi di cu ion. The Editor of "The Auk ' to be sure, 

 cannot be held n pon ible in any way for Mr Roo<evelt' paper, which 

 published el ewhere, bul a1 lea I one pa age in that of Drs. Barbour and 

 Phillips seems to me much more exceptionable than anything that my 

 paper contained. However) bad examples are best not followed, and it 

 would have been better to leave the fad to speak for them elves. 



hi mi mi/ the question of the objectionable which, of 



course, I musl regrel since they bav< given offen i to men whose good 

 opinion I vain'' highly, I will take up the more serious counter-chai 

 which have been made again t me in defense of Mr. Roosevelt And first 

 I must plead guilty to an 'nor of judgment in grouping 'misquotation* ' 

 <•!<•., with 'pieces of faulty reasoning.' Never having had any notion of 

 accusing Mr. Roosevelt of intentional misquotation, I carried all these 

 tilings in my own mind as instances of carelessness and the like and assigned 

 to each class an approximately equal degree of importance. 1 supposed 

 thai I wa nol including anything debatable in this category, but that the 

 point I made would be instantly seen In thit it seems l was mistaken, 

 and perhapi I gave mj readers credit for a fuller knowledge of Mr. Thayer's 

 views t.lian they possessed. I now see my error in including two radically 

 different cla e ofcritici mi in the same category, and regret it exceedingly 

 since it, hat apparently made a false impression on some readers. As a 

 mat ter of fad , that sentence might quite as well have been omitted entirely, 

 for I was willing to rest my case on the particular instances I cited. 



And now I propose to prove to your entire gati faction that the two 

 example* of misquotation, or misapprehension, which you say 'cannot be 

 egarded' are actually what. I have asserted them to be. You say: 

 "Mr Ro< in the first instance not quoting Mr. Thayer verbatim 



regarding the crouching hare, and merely put in quotation marke some of 

 Mi Thay< ion , What Mr. Roosevelt was pointing out was that 



in one statement Mr. Th rd the running hare as obliterated in the 



Sight of creeping animal-, which have their eyes below the level of the hare's 

 tail, while in another Statement he regards the emue-hing hare as boldly 

 eon picuou in the sight of the same class of animals, and this is surely 

 what Mr. Ths Now, 1 think that if any unbiased person will 



