558 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



supposed cases of the contrary arrangement, any apparent association 

 of " badge " and armament.) In the second place, the coloration of all 

 the members of these groups proves to be the most perfect imaginable 

 concealing coloration, picturing the details in the most exquisitely true 

 colors of the very background against which it is most dangerous for 

 their wearer to be detected (commonly that of their feeding ground). 

 While, on the other hand, apparently no brilliant colors at all are found 

 in any branch of the world of above-ground animal life, either in air or 

 water, where no such colors are typical of any of the animal's back- 

 grounds, no matter how much these animals may need advertising. 



The famous black and gold, the supposed blazon of offensiveness, so 

 characteristic of the wasp and bee family, is the utmost picture of the 

 sunlit vegetation which they haunt, with the golden stamens of flowers, 

 the yellow of fruit, and the dark interstices. Were this coloration really 

 such a blazon, why does nature deny it to the hordes of stinging ants 

 that often swarm within a few feet of the wasps, but wear only the com- 

 paratively dull tones that match the bark and earth surfaces to which 

 their general lack of wings condemns their lives? (Such red as is 

 found in ants' costumes is a universal detail of the forest debris.) 



So ingrained is the time-honored conception that such a creature as 

 a golden-patterned wasp, as he bustles among the flowers, owes his con- 

 spicuousness at least in part to his costume, that only actual personal 

 experiment with the laws herein shown can dispel it. Not till nat- 

 uralists give up collecting records of cases of conspicuousness, and begin 

 to inquire by experiment whether any more procryptic coloration could, 

 under the animal's circumstances, be devised, will they have begun at 

 all the study of this subject. One day's investigation of this kind would 

 greatly astonish them, and they would end by discovering that it is 

 unequivocally the wasp's actions that condemn it to so much visibility, 

 and this in spite of its wearing, as far as they can discover, every avail- 

 able form of concealment-coloration. 



As to the supposed warningly colored carnivores, the light-colored 

 marks that are considered as badges are often prominently concentrated 

 upon the animal's face and front top, and in no case equally prom- 

 inently arranged near his rear. Being always on the creature's sky-lit 

 surfaces, they obliterate him to the eyes of beholders from a lower level, 

 such as the seeing portion of his small terrestrial victims. In doing 

 this they fall into the universal class of concealing coloration. Fig. 12 

 illustrates this function, and the previous illustrations have shown that 

 this same white, so perfect an auxiliary of the animal's feeding opera- 

 tions, is not, in other views, unfavorable to its concealment. 



Let us now find out what traits and habits in these groups do con- 

 stantly go together. We find among the stench-bearing carnivores, just 

 as among the above insects, that the bright patterns are only found on 



