EXPLANATION OF PLATE I 



PEACOCK IN THE WOODS. 



Painted by Abbott H. Thayer, assisted by Richard S. Meryman 



The Peacock's splendor is the effect of a marvellous combination of 'obliterative' designs, 

 in forest-colors and patterns. From the golden-green of the forest's sunlight, through all its 

 tints of violet-glossed leaves in shadow, and its coppery glimpses of sunlit bark or earth, all 

 imaginable forest-tones are to be found in this bird's costume; and they 'melt' him into the 

 scene to a degree past all human analysis. 



Up in the trees, seen from below, his neck is at its bluest, and when sunlit, perfectly 

 represents blue sky seen through the leaves. Looked down on, in the bottom shades of the 

 jungle, it has rich green sheens which 'melt' it into the surrounding foliage. His back, in 

 all lights, represents golden-green foliage, and his wings picture tree-bark, rock, etc., in 

 sunlight and in shadow. His green-blue head is equipped with a crest which greatly helps 

 it against revealing its contour when it moves. Accompanying its every motion, this crest 

 is, as it were, a bit of background moving with it. The bare, white cheek-patch, on the 

 other hand, 'cuts a hole,' like a lighted foliage-vista, in the bird's face. The tail, when 

 spread — or even when shut — 'mingles' in a thousand ways with its jungle surroundings. The 

 ocelli, guaranteed by their forest-scenery colors to vanish into the background at a short 

 distance, have one peculiarly fantastic use. Smallest and dimmest near the body, and growing 

 bigger and brighter in even progression toward the circumference of the tail, they inevitably 

 lead the eye away from the bird, till it finds itself straying amid the foliage beyond the tail's 

 evanescent border. 



The spread tail looks also very much like a shrub bearing some kind of fruit or flower. 

 Its coppery ground-color (in a front view) represents perfectly that of the bare ground and 

 tree-trunks seen between the leaves. The very positiveness of the design in such details as 

 an ocellus, works to conceal the wearer, on the principle explained in the Introduction by 

 the quotation from Stevenson. The forest is so full of highly individualized vegetable forms, 

 and of many-colored spots and streaks made by their confused outlines, that the predator's 

 eye, watching mainly for motion, doubtless gives but slight attention to any of them, or to 

 anything that looks like one of them. In addition to all this, every changed point of view on 

 the beholder's part makes all the bird's details assume new colors and new correlations to 

 each other and to the scene. — A. H. T. 



