LEAF AND TENDRIL 



laws of change, variety, opposition, contrast. Life 

 must go on, and life for the moment breaks the 

 unity, the balance. May not what is called pro- 

 tective coloration be largely this stamp of the en- 

 vironment, this tendency to oneness, to harmony 

 and simplicity, that pervades nature, organic no 

 less than inorganic? 



Things in nature blend and harmonize; one 

 thing matches with another. All open-air objects 

 tend to take on the same color- tones; everything 

 in the woods becomes woodsy, things upon the 

 shore get the imprint of the shore, things in the 

 water assume the hues of the water, the lichen 

 matches the rock and the trees, the shell matches 

 the beach and the waves; everywhere is the tend- 

 ency to unity and simplicity, to low tones and 

 adaptive colors. 



One would not expect animals of the plains or 

 of the desert to be colored like those of the bush 

 or of the woods; the effects of the strong uniform 

 light in the one case and of the broken and check- 

 ered light in the other would surely result in differ- 

 ent coloration. That never-ending brown or gray 

 or white should not in time stamp itself upon the 

 creatures living in the midst of them is incredible. 



Through the action of this principle, water ani- 

 mals will be water-colored, the fish in tropic seas 

 will be more brilliantly colored than those in north- 

 ern seas, tropical birds and insects will be of gayer 

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