caterpillars, etc.) are, we believe, the first ever published which rightly illus- 

 trate and in some respects do justice to the wonderful effects of obliterative 

 coloration, based on the great law of obliterative shading. Many photographs 

 of wild animals in nature (e. g., the ptarmigan shown in Fig. 41) illustrate 

 the same thing with compelling force and beauty. Photography, indeed, is 

 the great aUy of those who would expound the laws of obliterative coloration; 

 and it is destined — more swiftly now that the underlying principles of that 

 beautiful phenomenon have been disclosed and analyzed — ^to effect a funda- 

 mental change in men's knowledge of the looks of animals in nature; and, by 

 the same token, in the drawings and paintings men make of these wild ani- 

 mals. The world has had enough, or must soon have had enough, of pic- 

 tures of birds and beasts with their light-and-shade falsified to make them 

 show. Outdoor nature as it really is, in the matter of the marvelous and 

 exquisite visual correlations between animal and environment, offers to art, 

 in this late age, an almost boundless virgin field. 



Figs. 84-89 and 93-94 are all photographs from live mammals, either in 

 nature or captivity. Fig. 86 shows a tame hare upside down against a nor- 

 mal background. (See also the photographed flat hides of mammals shown 

 in Figs. II, 12, and 13 of Chapter II.) 



Mammals, totally unlike birds, butterflies, and even fishes and reptiles, 

 are almost wholly devoid of really gaudy surface-colors. In some few cases, 

 mammalian fur reaches or nearly reaches the standard of pure color in the 

 direction of yellow, green, and possibly orange; but its normal and usual range 

 of tint is through all the grades of neutral, from black to white, and through 

 the entire scale of browns and grays, from vivid rust-color to cold bluish 

 gray. When clear, gaudy color does occur on mammals, it is usually in the 

 naked skin, as on the faces and rumps of certain monkeys and baboons. 

 Now whether, as may well be the case, mammalian hairs are, as compared with 

 the feathers of birds, the scales of butterflies, and the skin and scales of fishes, 

 structurally incapable of producing brilliant colors, there is yet a sufficient 

 ulterior reason why we should expect to find mammals brown and gray, 



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