degree, do these pictures on animals' coats exceed the verisimilitude of the 

 actual scenes they imitate. They have been compounded and epitomized 

 and clarified till only pure, essential typicality remains. The difference may 

 be stated tersely thus : On the one hand, we see a stick, a leaf, a web of twigs 

 over the sky; on the other hand, we see stick, leaf, web of twigs over sky. Just 

 as in great human art, but far more essentially and surely, the trivialities 

 and chance individual abnormalities have been eliminated, or subordinated 

 to the scheme of ultimate, impartial typicality. To learn, then, the purely 

 characteristic colors and light-and-shade effects of leaves and sticks and 

 stones and other parts and types of natural scenery, we should look not at the 

 scenes themselves, but at the animals whose patterns picture them. The 

 essential realism of these pictures is such as the keenest artist among men 

 could never hope to match. Nay, for Nature herself has made them — Nature 

 herself has discovered and applied, to a point utterly beyond human emula- 

 tion, the art of painting pictures. 



Let us recur once more to the Ruffed Grouse. The transverse barring 

 of its breast and flanks, a form of marking common to a majority of the larger 

 birds inhabiting northern forests, closely imitates the appearance of hori- 

 zontal branches seen at rather short range. Such branches are a very im- 

 portant feature of coniferous forest scenes. When this barring occurs on 

 the underside of a forest bird, it is almost invariably continued by a series of 

 spots on the outer webs of the primary wing-feathers. These spots become 

 confluent when the wing is folded, and thus the large-branch-picturing is 

 made to extend almost uninterruptedly across the bird. (See the colored 

 plate. Our grouse, however, was rather weakly barred underneath.) The 

 beautiful oval-spotted pattern of the Ruffed Grouse's rump is somewhat hard 

 to analyze. It plays a small part in the side views, but has great prominence 

 when the bird is seen from above. More than anything else, perhaps, it 

 looks like a several yards distant patch of pine-needle-covered ground, peppered 

 with small dead leaves, such as those of the Checkerberry (Gaultheria), or 

 dappled with broken flecks of sunlight. 



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