552 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



tance. 2 The same thing is true of the letters, the unmarked ones being 

 legible much farther than the others. Fig. 2 shows exactly the same 

 effect with reversed colors. That part of the gray butterfly next the 

 black ocellus fades, as one recedes, until it becomes pure white like the 

 background, leaving the rest of the butterfly to continue visible at a 

 much greater distance. In both these cases the effect of conspicuous 

 pattern proves to be the exact reverse of the old hypothesis on which the 

 Bates and Wallace theories so largely rest. Figs. 3 and 4 will, I think, 

 still more surprise the many writers who, from Darwin and Wallace 

 down to the present time, are accustomed to say of one or another bril- 

 liantly pied species, that its patterns are so conspicuous that one can 

 see it a hundred yards off. It is here shown that it can not be the 

 brilliancy or conspicuousness of the animal's patterns that enables them 

 thus to see him from afar, since these very characters here produce the 

 opposite effect. The reader will discover, in looking from a greater and 

 greater distance, that it is the normally colored, strongly pied butterfly 

 and skunk, respectively, that fade first, and that all of the remaining 

 six figures can be seen further. (These can be tested not only by 

 distance, but by decreased illumination, and, especially for the latter 

 means, a still more satisfactory test of the skunk can be made by using 

 life-size figures and turning down the lights in a hall, or studying them 

 out of doors as night comes on. ) He will discover that the supposed 

 white blazon actually serves to efface the black animal on a nearer view 

 (especially if seen through the leaves). He can not fail, either, to per- 

 ceive that an all-white skunk, being exempt from the risk of giving an 

 impression of two different things, a black one, and a white one, would 

 in the long run, be, also, the more recognizable when seen against any 

 ground, except snow. 2a It is not yet generally perceived that in the 

 scenery about us every spot means to a casual observer one thing, and 

 it follows that two different color-patches, as of the skunk, amidst the 

 million color-patches in sight, tend, especially when more or less eclipsed 

 by vegetation, to mean, not one pied animal, but two different elements 

 of the scene. It must be remembered that the skunk's scene is a night 

 scene, commonly abounding, in wild places, in black shadow masses 

 relieved here and there by light spots made by bleached twigs, fragments 

 of fallen birches, shining wet spots, etc., and, what is by far the most 

 essential fact, with all visibility whatsoever at the minimum. In fact 

 the whole " warning-color " theory in the case of these nocturnal species 

 smacks of the laboratory. For instance, although skunks abound all 



3 In most butterflies, the body itself is wonderfully effaced by having its 

 color blent off into the wing; yet it profits greatly by the effacing-power of the 

 strong pattern to right and left. 



2a To learn the superiority of monochrome for identification, paint a uniform 

 tone over a chiselled inscription that has become hard to read because of 

 weather-stains, and instantly it is as legible as when it was first cut. 



