LEAF AND TENDRIL 



make her neutral grays and browns everywhere 

 prevail — the male instinct of reproduction, which 

 is major, and the social or gregarious instinct, 

 which is minor, but which, I am inclined to believe, 

 has its effect. 



The gregarious birds and mammals are as a rule 

 less locally colored than those of solitary habits. 

 Thus the more gregarious elk and antelope and 

 sheep are less adaptively colored than the more 

 solitary deer. The buffalo had not the usual color 

 of a plains animal; the individual was lost in the 

 mass, and the mass darkened the earth. The musk 

 ox goes in herds and does not put on a white coat 

 in the sub- Arctic regions. 



Does a solitary life tend to beget neutral and ob- 

 scure tints in a bird or beast? The flocking birds 

 nearly all tend to bright colors, at least brighter 

 than their solitary congeners. The passenger pigeon 

 furnished a good example near at hand. Contrast 

 its bright hues with those of the more recluse turtle- 

 dove. Most of our blackbirds have a strong flocking 

 instinct, and they are conspicuously colored. The 

 sociability of the cedar-birds may help to account 

 for their crests, their banded tails, and their pure, 

 fine browns. As soon as any of the ground birds 

 show a development of the flocking instinct, their 

 hues become more noticeable, as is the case with 

 the junco, the snow bunting, the shore lark, and the 

 lark bunting of the West. Among the tree Fringil- 

 88 



