to fly amid surroundings much and brightly variegated, he will be the less 

 conspicuous the more bold samples of his environment's varied spots and 

 colors he bears on his own surface. Such an enrichment of attire for greater 

 average inconspicuousness in flight has Nature furnished many moths, on 

 the hind wings. When, as is common enough, these are mainly whitish, or 

 of some very pale color, they serve a still more definite obliterative purpose, 

 and that by night as well as, or rather better than, by day. Like the white 

 sterns of ruminants and hares, the white back-patterns of grubbing nocturnal 

 carnivores, etc., they often nearly or quite match the sky. Thus a white- or 

 pale-hind-winged moth retreating in free air, especially at night, will often 

 be quite undistinguishable against the sky, while one with dark hind wings 

 would be plainly visible. But many have dark hind wings, or hind wings 

 with strong dark markings, and such a coloration seems meant for daylight 

 rather than for night-light use. Indeed, though most moths are almost 

 wholly nocturnal, their costumes, with few exceptions, are doubtless specially 

 adapted to diurnal use. For most of them pass the day in the open air, sitting 

 motionless, flatly folded, on tree trunks, rocks, grass blades, dead or living 

 leaves, or the brown, leaf-strewn forest ground. It is chiefly against dis- 

 covery by daylight in such-like situations that the intensely high- wrought 

 "cryptic" coloration of their upper sides avails them; as the often far simpler, 

 brighter, and more boldly variegated coloration of the hind wings, wholly 

 hidden while they are perching, avails them when, disturbed, they are forced 

 to make a daylight flight. 



But the special forte of moths' coloration lies in their finely wrought hid- 

 ing- patterns t which, for specialization and variety, for marvelous minuteness 

 and obliterative potency, are not to be surpassed and scarcely even to be 

 equaled in any other branch of the entire animal kingdom. These patterns 

 differ from the corresponding ones of butterflies (all but the few flatly-applied 

 kinds, like the South American and West Indian "Creaker" (Ageronia jer- 

 onia, etc.), whose bark- and lichen-pattern is almost as exquisitely and mi- 

 nutely wrought as that of any moth), just as their wearers differ from the 



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