V 



GAY PLUMES AND DULL 



NOT long since, one of our younger naturalists 

 sent me a photograph of a fawn in a field of 

 daisies, and said that he took the picture to show 

 what he considered the protective value of the spots. 

 The white spots of the fawn did blend in with the 

 daisies, and certainly rendered the fawn less con- 

 spicuous than it would have been without them, 

 but I am slow to believe that the fawn has spots that 

 it may the better hide in a daisy-field, or, in fact, 

 anywhere else, or that the spots have ever been 

 sufficiently protective to have materially aided in 

 the perpetuity of the deer species. What use they 

 have, if any, I do not know, any more than I know 

 what use the spots on the leopard or the girafiFe 

 have, or the stripes on the zebra. I can only con- 

 jecture concerning their use. The panther does 

 not have spots, and seems to get along just as well 

 without them. The young of the moose and the 

 caribou and the pronghom are not spotted, and yet 

 their habitat is much the same as that of the deer. 

 Why some forest animals are uniformly dark 

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