LEAF AND TENDRIL 



that the influence of the environment should be 

 more potent in such cases. The grasshoppers in 

 the fields are of all shades of green and brown and 

 gray, but is it probable that these tints ever hide 

 them from their natural enemies — the sharp-eyed 

 birds and fowls ? A grasshopper gives itself away 

 when it hops, and it always hops. On the sea- 

 coast I noticed that the grasshoppers were gray like 

 the sands. What fed upon them, if anything, I 

 could not find out, but their incessant hopping 

 showed how little they sought concealment. The 

 nocturnal enemies of grasshoppers, such as coons 

 and skunks, are probably not baffled at all by their 

 assimilative colors. 



Our wood-frog (Rana sylvatica) is found through- 

 out the summer on the dry leaves in the woods, and 

 it is red like them. When it buries itself in the leaf 

 mould in the fall for its winter sleep, it turns dark 

 like the color of the element in which it is buried. 

 Can this last change be for protection also? No 

 enemy sees it or disturbs it in that position, and 

 yet it is as "protectively" colored as in summer. 

 This is the stamp of the environment again. 



The toad is of the color of the ground where he 

 fumbles along in the twilight or squats by day, and 

 yet, I fancy, his enemy the snake finds him out 

 without difficulty. He is of the color of the earth 

 because he is of the earth earthy, and the bullfrog 

 is of the color of his element, — but there are the 

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