GAY PLUMES AND DULL 



vinced, but that it has been greatly overworked in 

 our time, and that more has been put upon it than 

 it can bear, of this also I am convinced. 



I think we are safe in saying that a bird is pro- 

 tectively colored when the color, as it were, strikes 

 in, and the bird itself acts upon the theory that it 

 is in a measure hidden behind its assimilative 

 plumage. This is true of nearly all the grouse tribe. 

 These birds seem instinctively to know the value 

 of their imitative tints, and are tame or wild ac- 

 cording as their tints do or do not match the snow 

 on the ground. The snow keeps the secrets of the 

 snow, and the earth keeps the secrets of the earth, 

 but each tells upon the other. Sportsmen tell me 

 that quail will not " lay " when there is snow upon 

 the ground. The snow gives them away; it lights 

 up their covers in the weeds and the bog as with a 

 lamp. At other times the quail will "lay" till the 

 hunter almost steps upon them. His dog some- 

 times picks them up. What is the meaning of this 

 behavior but that the bird feels hidden in the one 

 case and not in the other ? Moreover, the grouse are 

 all toothsome; and this fact of the toothsomeness 

 of some birds and the toughness and unsavoriness 

 of others, such as the woodpecker, the crow tribe, 

 gulls, divers, cormorants, and the like, has undoubt- 

 edly played some part in their natural history. But 

 whether they are dull-colored because they are 

 toothsome, or toothsome because they are dull- 

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