object moves about outdoors, in sunlight and in shadow, this versatility of 

 silhouetting becomes extreme. Day's vast chiaroscuro can make the black- 

 est objects 'relieve' bright against dark shadows, and the whitest objects 

 ' relieve' shadowy dark against the light. . Given a sufficient freedom of 

 motion on the part of object or beholder, and, aside from changes in the 

 object's own illumination, its backgrounds are bound to range through this 

 whole scale of variations and contrasts, from earth and its darkest shadows 

 to sky and its brightest lights. Patterns on animals' coats are the utmost that 

 Nature can do in opposition to these potent vicissitudes oj silhouetting. This 

 is the point at which Darwin, Wallace, and others went wrong; and this in 

 spite of the fact that their supposed "conspicuous" species are, doubtless, 

 more easily detected, in the long run, than their "cryptic" species. It is 

 true that if one sits still in a wild place one will usually detect more individuals 

 of the so-called conspicuous kinds. But this is because they are mostly ar- 

 boreal or aerial species which a terrestrial observer is apt to see against a much 

 wider gamut oj background than that to which the so-called cryptics are sub- 

 jected. They are the ones that have to move about most freely in sunlight 

 and in shade, and against all manner of backgrounds, from shining sky to 

 the darkest forest shadows. Their bold coloring, however, minimizes, not 

 increases, their conspicuousness in this difficult situation, where the more 

 nearly monochrome so-called cryptics, adapted for "sticking close" to tree 

 trunks or the brown ground, would be comparatively conspicuous. One 

 animal most needs to escape observation from above, another from below, 

 and others equally from all directions. It follows that some must be colored 

 to match brown ground, some to match the sky, or sky and foliage, while 

 some must have costumes combining these extremes; and just such wonder- 

 ful adaptations, in highest development, prove to be universal. Animals, 

 therefore, are conspicuous when seen from any but the right viewpoint — white 

 sky-matchers showing bright against the ground, brown earth-matchers sil- 

 houetting dark against the sky, etc., — with all the magic of their concealing- 

 costumes lost. Again, it follows that we should be inclined to count con- 



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