complete refutation of the theory that the counter shading is due to the tan- 

 ning effect of light. On the other hand, the idea that the paleness of desert 

 creatures is due to bleaching, is equally well answered by the fact that their 

 shadowed undersides are still the lightest, as in the case of almost all other 

 animals. 



Figs. 11-13 show photographs of the skins of various birds and mammals, 

 split longitudinally through the lower median line, and spread out fiat. This 

 is a simple and adequate way of exhibiting the exact character of the obliter- 

 ative shading of animals. The names of the species thus represented are 

 given under the pictures. It will be seen that some beasts which are usually 

 considered practically monochrome, such as the Mink {Putorius vison), have 

 in reality a slight counter shading. (See footnote, p. 123.) 



Pictures of protectively colored wild birds and mammals in situ cannot be 

 really true to Nature if they represent them as having the light-and-shade of 

 normal solid objects — a fault usually committed by illustrators, who study 

 them in unnatural situations, such as the cages of a menagerie, or other places 

 where the illumination fails to cooperate with their counter shading. These 

 paintings of ours (grouse, rabbit, snake, caterpillars, etc.) are intended as 

 examples (outside the field of photography) of true animal illustration — ^ren- 

 dering instead of defeating the wonderful obliterative effects of their counter 

 shading.* 



Of course so new a lesson cannot be learned all at once by the world at 

 large. But when the truth on any subject has once been started, it cannot 

 fail gradually to supplant the previously existing errors. It will be many 



* Japanese and Chinese art almost entirely dispenses with light and shade, dealing solely with 

 line and color. Japanese pictures of birds and mammals, therefore, represent, approximately, the 

 animal's actual color tones, quite irrespective of shading. A white belly, for instance, is painted as 

 bright as a white back. Thus these Oriental renderings of animals are actually, in one sense, more 

 realistic than the Occidental, because by their complete lack of shading they approximate the won- 

 derfully unsubstantial look of the birds and beasts in Nature. An object which shows lighter on its 

 lower border than its upper, under the light of the sky, cannot possibly look solid. It looks at most 

 like a party-colored flat (or concave) surface, rather than a rotund body. 



28 



