branches, vines, fruits, and flowers, shade and sunlight — all mix and overlap 

 and intertwine in the most bewildering way, Amidst, against, this intricate 

 tangle, even a simple bird-shaped bird, of uniform color, would be very incon- 

 spicuous ; while a bird (like some of these birds of paradise) so adorned with 

 grotesque plumes * and bristling, 'hay-stack' tufts of superadded feathers as 

 to have lost almost all semblance of his simple bodily form, would be almost 

 insured against detection as he sat or moved in such a forest maze. His many-' 

 colored plumose excrescences would serve with extraordinary efficiency to 

 blend him into his surroundings — here seeming to coalesce with a bunch of 

 gaudy flowers in sunlight, here with shining leaves, and there with a gulf of 

 somber shade. Then, too, all irregular outward extension of a bird's form, 

 amid such surroundings, increases the frequency with which parts of his out- 

 line come into actual touch with like or kindred colored details of vegetation, 

 thus obscuring still more potently the bird's real shape. (See Plate VI.) 



The three main obliterative agents other than counter shading, which we 

 have now considered, namely, 'ruptive' patterns of boldly contrasting patches 

 of color, iridescence and other changeable color, and appendages, different 

 as they are in form, are yet closely akin to one another in the results they 

 achieve. In one degree or another, in one or another manner, they mask the 

 contour of their wearer, and 'break him up' into his background and sur- 

 roundings. Kindred in character, the three principles are often combined 

 in application, two or even all three of them frequently occurring in the same 

 costume; and the intricacies of their coadjustment are often very hard to an- 

 alyze. In the case of certain birds of paradise, all three principles are found 

 in full coordinate development. Male birds of paradise are well known to 

 have remarkable habits of raising and vibrating their plumes, as they sit in 

 small companies, among the females, in certain chosen trees. The observa- 

 tion of this habit has led people, most naturally, to believe that sexual dis- 

 play is the sole or at least the paramount use of the plumes and gaudy colors. 



* Some of the big tufts of plumes terminate in such a filmy, hazy spray, that they can scarcely 

 fail, in any view, to seem softly blended into their background. 



9 8 



