OCTOBEE 7, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



467 



est attainments, whose whole life is made up 

 of studying the visual aspects of all objects, 

 and with a mind singularly free from precon- 

 ceived ideas acquired from the study of " cab- 

 inet natural history," he is the most authori- 

 tative exponent of this phase of nature that 

 could be chosen. Indeed, it has been the lack 

 of this training of the mind through. the eye 

 —rather than the reverse operation — that has 

 proved the stumbling-block of such exhaustive 

 students and observers as Wallace and Dar- 

 win. Thus it has remained for the painter- 

 naturalist to discover the all-underlying truths 

 of protective coloration. Mr. Thayer and his 

 truly gifted sou have spent some eight years 

 in the preparation of this work (which they 

 modestly call an introduction to the study) 

 during which they have unremittingly prose- 

 cuted their search for the truth in New Eng- 

 land, in the West Indies and in Trinidad. 

 Thus they have had full opportunity to study 

 in nature what they here so lucidly unfold. 



Without careful study of this introduction 

 the reader will find it difiicult, at times, to 

 take at face value some of the statements 

 which follow in the amplified text. Perhaps 

 the essence of the whole book is this : " Thus, 

 at these crucial moments in the lives of ani- 

 mals, when they are on the verge of catching 

 or being caught, sight is commonly the indis- 

 pensable sense. It is for these moments that 

 their coloration is best adapted, and when 

 looked at from the view point of enemy or 

 prey, as the case may be, proves to be oblit- 

 erative." Thus an animal may wear a garb 

 vividly conspicuous at most times, when its 

 senses may protect it in the open (like the 

 zebra) for the sake of the crucial moments of 

 foaling or drinking in the brush or brakes, 

 when necessarily exposed to the danger of 

 lions or whatever enemy. This of course goes 

 against the accepted theory of natural selec- 

 tion, " which is based on the belief that organ- 

 isms are susceptible of modification limited 

 only by the duration of the circumstances 

 causing it, or by the attainment of ultimate 

 perfect fitness to environment." 



In almost every phase of which the book 

 treats, the direction of inquiry is new, and 

 the authors demand of the reader an open 

 mind, free from preconceptions. This must 

 result, as in all pioneer fields, in the forming 

 of an opposition, armed with an array of 

 " conspicuous " creatures, nearly all of which 

 the authors, with an understanding of the 

 true values of out-doors light and color and 

 environment, find it easy to render if not 

 utterly invisible, at least far from conspicu- 

 ous. At many out-doors demonstrations given 

 before companies of scientific men, the optical 

 delusions produced — at short distances — by as 

 closely following nature's methods as the 

 painter's artifices could achieve, the invariable 

 result has been the open acknowledgment of 

 mistaking the preconceived for the real ap- 

 pearance of the creature. 



Gerald Thayer, in amplifying his father's 

 discoveries, builds up a wonderful structure 

 of new conceptions, most beautifully illus- 

 trated with paintings by his father, himself 

 and a number of willing assistants, as well as 

 by a mass of widely and well chosen photo- 

 graphs from nature, contributed by a score or 

 more of naturalists in different parts of the 

 world. The assertion that, in the ultimate, 

 all patterns and colors on all animals will 

 be found to be obliterative at the moment of 

 greatest importance to the wearer is supported 

 by illustration — generally convincing and al- 

 ways beautiful, and often picturing the most 

 conspicuous and bizarre design dissolved in a 

 beautifully true landscape. In the plates 

 showing the wood drake the bird was painted 

 very literally from a mounted bird out of 

 doors, and the delightful setting in each case 

 painted by simply transposing the exact color- 

 notes from the bird to their positions in the 

 landscape — a fact which escapes the reader 

 who looks casually at the plates. Thus, too, 

 other of the color-plates are almost sure to be 

 misunderstood if hastily viewed, to the great 

 injustice of the thought with which the book 

 is throughout prepared. 



In the first few chapters the general law of 

 gradation is developed with much fullness and 



