GAY PLUMES AND DULL 



also much more brilliant than ours. Our gallina- 

 ceous birds are all dull neutral-tinted, but look at 

 this family of birds in the Orient, brilliant beyond 

 words to paint! In Africa the sand grouse is bril- 

 liantly marked. There are also snow-white herons 

 in Africa, and black and white ibises. On the Aru 

 Islands in the Malay Archipelago is a flycatcher 

 that is brilliant black and bright orange. 



In our hemisphere the swans are white, the 

 pigeons are blue, and the parrots are green. In 

 Australia the swans are black, and there is a black 

 pigeon and a black parrot. In the desert of Sahara 

 most of the birds are desert-colored, but there are 

 some that are blue, and others that are black or 

 brown and white. It is said that the Arctic fox, 

 which is snow-white in most other places, remains 

 blue all winter in Iceland. No doubt there are 

 reasons for all these variations, but whatever these 

 reasons are, they do not seem to favor the theory 

 of protective coloration. 



The more local an animal is, the more its color 

 assimilates with its surroundings; or perhaps I 

 should say, the more uniform its habitat, the more 

 assimilative its coloring. The valley quail of Cali- 

 fornia frequents trees and roosts in trees, hence 

 its coloring is not copied from the ground. It is 

 darker and bluer than our Bob White. 



Nature dislikes incongruities, and permits them 

 under protest. The fleet rabbit with eyes ever open 

 57 



