Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1908 bv Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. j 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1903. 
VOL. LXl.— No. 13. 
No. 346 Broadway, New York 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
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The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
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garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
■)f current topics, Jthe editors are not responsible for the views of 
:orrespondents. 
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particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
PROTECTIVE COLORATION. 
Protective coloration is a familiar subject, and one 
concerning which most of us have had some experience. 
We have all looked at — perhaps without seeing it- — a bird 
crouched on the ground, a rabbit huddled in its form, a 
snipe standing motionless before a tuft of yellow grass. 
These things we do not see partly because we do not 
know just how to look for them, and partly because the 
creature looked at is so colored that it appears to be a 
portion of the landscape with which it blends. This pro- 
tective coloration is analogous to protective mimicry, 
but is not the same thing. Examples of mimicry are seen 
in the so-called walking stick, which resembles the twig 
of a tree, in certain butterflies, whose colors closely re- 
semble those of the flowers among which they feed, and 
in certain others which have dull colored linings to their 
wings which resemble the stones, earth, or bark on which 
they rest with folded wings. Some harmless snakes imi- 
tate the actions of their venomous relatives, rattling with 
the tail and assuming an aspect of great ferocity, while 
certain herons, when approached, hold themselves so erect 
and motionless that, with the streaking of their necks, 
they cannot be distinguished from the weeds or blades of 
the grass among which, they are standing. In the same 
way a grouse, when startled and driven into a tree, stands 
motionless with feathers pressed close to its sides and 
head and neck stretched out, so that it looks much like a 
dead branch projecting from the limb on which it stands. 
Many of us have known the location of a nest of quail, 
woodcock, or partridge, and on visiting the place to try 
to see the bird sitting on her eggs, have learned how 
difficult it is to detect her, even though the precise spot 
where she sits may be known. Once while riding along 
over the prairie at the edge of a little boggy place, an 
English snipe rose from the roadside, and flying twenty- 
live or thirty yards alighted apparently on the bare black 
mud at the foot of a little tuft of yellow grass. Until he 
closed his wings he was distinctly visible. Then he dis- 
appeared. As we rode on watching the tussock beneath 
which he stood, we saw a little projection from one side 
which grew constantly larger, and a moment later this 
projection took a step or two forward, and was recog- 
nized as the snipe and then stood still against the yellow 
down hanging grass of the tussock. As it ceased to move 
it became invisible. 
If we look at a zebra in his paddock or a tiger in his 
cage, it seems to us that a more conspicuous coloring 
could hardly have been devised for an animal. Yet the 
tiger crouching in the grass or among the cane of the 
jungle harmonizes absolutely with its surroundings, the 
3'ellow stripes representing the stalks shone on by the 
sun, while the black stripes represent the shadows be- 
tween those stalks. The testimony of African observers 
shows that in cover the zebra is invisible, and that he is 
also practically invisible at a distance on the open plain in 
broad daylight, and also at close quarters in the dusk 
and in the moonlight. It appears that the white stripes 
blend with the shafts of light sifting through the foliage 
and branches and reflected by the leaves of the trees, 
while in an uncertain light, or at a great distance, the 
black and the white, or the brown and the yellow — of 
other species — mutually counteract each other and form a 
uniform gray. 
It is well known that most animals living wholly on 
the plains are colored more or less to conform to the 
surface of the ground where they are found. This is 
true of the elk, the antelope, the various deer and the 
mountain sheep of our own West, while the protection of 
white is seen in our mountain goat and in the ptarmigan 
which live among the snow. 
The deer, the antelope and the sheep, together with 
manj' of the wild animals of other lands, are pale or while 
b^owj the object of this coloring being, according to Mr, 
Thayer's law, to compensate for the shadows which the 
bodies cast, and to make the animal absolutely incon- 
spicuous. It is worth while, in fact, to quote precisely 
what Mr. Thayer says about this law : "Mimicry makes 
an animal appear to be some other thing, whereas this 
newly discovered law makes him cease to appear to exist 
at all." Mr. Thayer calls this the law of gradation in the 
color of animals, and says of it animals are painted by 
nature darkest on those parts which tend to be most 
lighted by the sky's light, and vice versa. The result 
of this coloring is that the gradations of light and shade 
by which opaque solid objects manifest themselves to the 
eye are effaced at every point. Thus the markings on 
animals partake in appearance of the background against 
which the animal is seen. An enemy looking down on a 
ground-inhabiting bird from above finds it difficult to 
detect the bird, because its color matches so with the 
mottled ground about it. An enemy looking at the bird 
from the side, finds it equally difficult to detect it, because 
the mottled color, lightest below and grading to dark 
above, blends so closely with the vegetation against 
which the bird is seen and among which it walks. 
Mr. Thayer's law is recognized as one of the most im- 
portant contributions to the subject of protective color- 
ation that has yet been made. Each reader, and above 
all each country dweller, should learn to observe these 
matters for himself. He will find that wide open eyes 
and the habit of recording what he sees in his note book, 
will add A^ery greatly to his pleasure in life. 
SOME STORIES OF THE DAY. 
Our correspondent who noted the yacht racing picture 
fake by the New York Journal, if he read the papers with 
an eye to such things, might readily catalogue a long list 
of kindred inventions and deceptions. For instance, the 
Bangor, Me., correspondent of the Boston Herald, under 
date of September 9, reported that W. K. Vanderbilt, Jr., 
and R. C. Watson, of New York, passed through Bangor 
on that day; and Mr. Vanderbilt was made to say; "We 
have just been on a hunting trip to Nova Scotia and we 
were very successful, getting a number of heads. We 
have sent them on to New York and will have them 
mounted. We had a fine time." As the hunting season 
in Nova Scotia was some weeks off, it is apparent that 
somebody was intent upon trifling with the Herald. 
More grotesque than this was an achievement of the 
New York Herald the other day. Word having come 
over the wires that an automobile party from Paterson, 
N. J., had set out on a hunting tour in the Maine woods 
in the moose and deer country, the Herald artists on the 
spot (in Herald Square) pulled out from their fake photo 
files a photograph of a party of hunters posing for their 
portraits with a lot of huge elk horns. Now to the fakir 
on a great metropolitan daily all things that have horns 
look alike ; moose, deer, elk or caribou, it is all one to 
him; if the game depicted happens to be a species un- 
known, so much more creditable is the fake. Accordingly 
the Herald artist put automobiling caps on the men in the 
picture, and under it inscribed the legend: "Spoils of 
James B. Dill's automobile hunting party. Mr. Dill stands 
at the right." Then the news-fake editor added the men- 
dacious explanation of the picture: 
James B. Dill, corporation lawyer and partner of John W. 
Griggs, former Attorney-General, with quite a party, that included 
Mr. Dill's two daughters, Winthrop E. Scarritt and John M. 
Schmidt, of East Orange, N. J.> has just completed an automobile 
trip to the Rangeley Lakes. They are now on their way home. 
On the long automobile trip there was abundant opportunity for 
shooting, and fishing. Several deer were shot by the tourists. 
A photographer who was in the party photographed Mr. Dill and 
his friends at the conclusion of a particularly fine day's sport, as 
Ihey stood surrounded by their game. Mr. Dill expects to bring 
the antlers of the deer home with him. 
And the Herald reader paid three cents the next morn- 
ing for the privilege of reading this picturesque Maine 
elk hunting story, and heaven only knows how much 
more pure unadulterated fiction in the other columns. 
But the palm for large achievement in this line must be 
awarded to the London Times, which gravely reported 
one day last week that an American in Ireland had 
liberated a consignment of rattlesnakes, putting them out 
to determine whether they would multiply and stock the 
land in spite of St. Patrick. The story was cabled to 
the American press, and probably went around the world, 
never to be overtaken by the explanation, ^Yhich fo].lowe4 
a day later, that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated 
for the mocking of the Thunderer and the gaiety of 
nations. The story sounds like the picturesque tales 
which used to be sent over the country under a date line 
of Lander, Wyo., telling of packs of wild dogs running 
down mountain sheep and bringing the mutton home to 
their master, and of terrific combats between man and 
mountain lion ended by the man severing with his iron 
jaw the jugular of the lion. The Lander genius has been 
quiescent of late ; can it be possible that he has emigrated 
to Ireland, and chosen for his medium the stupidly credu- 
lous London Times? 
THE DISMAL SWAMP. 
The growth of a people multiplies their necessities, 
which in turn are the most persistent incentives to con- 
stant progress. The onward march in civilization is re- 
lentless and unceasing. Obstacles in its path are ruth- 
lessly removed or destroyed, while all else of earth, air 
and water are laid under tribute by man to minister to his 
needs and pleasures. 
In his capacity as an individual, man is more or less 
prone to sentiment and veneration, while in his capacity 
as a unit of society he is mercilessly iconoclastic. Society 
as a whole in its activities is actuated by the units of 
Avhich it is composed. This is more in evidence in the 
great cities where the destruction or removal of venerated 
institutions is viewed with phlegmatic indifference. His- 
toric grounds, sacred in their associations of the doings 
of war or peace, are applied to utilitarian purposes with 
no waste of words. Cemeteries are condemned, over- 
hauled and restored to the uses of the living in the most 
matter of fact manner. A historic sentiment fares badly 
when it clashes with a present necessity. But the march 
of progress, which is a form of iconoclasm, is constantly 
taking wider form. Whole sections, chiefly asso- 
ciated with the sentimental, are in progress of appropria- 
tion to utilitarianism. The most recent is the Dismal 
Swamp, famous in the realm of myth, story, and song. 
In slavery days it was a famous and much used sanctuary 
for runaway slaves who were in a measure safe from cap- 
ture when once well within its wild fastnesses. In its 
vast forests of cedar, cypress, and other trees, slaves and 
criminals were said to have lived securel)'^ for years. The 
negro mind, and, in a lesser degree, the white mind, 
peopled its gloomy depths with multitudinous and varied 
beings of the supernatural world. It was the hiding place 
of Mrs. Stowe's Dred. Tom Moore, that superlative 
man of rhyme and reason, deemed it worthy of his 
muse when he touched upon it in the "Tale of the Dismal 
Swamp" with its haunting verse : 
They made her a grave too cold and damp 
For a soul so warm and true; 
And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, 
Where all night long by a firefly lamp, 
She paddles her white canoe. 
And now the daily press reports have it that vandal 
man will drain this vast area of thirty miles by ten, and 
where once was the home of big game and small game 
vv'ill be the homes and workshops of man. Lake Drum- 
mond, the central body of water, will cease to exist. The 
great district so prolific in myth, legend and story, will 
be taken from the realm of imagination into the realm 
of the material every day world. 
The telegraphed statement that Senator Proctor had 
broken the New Hampshire game law may well have 
caused his friends and acquaintances to smile. These 
friends know that it would be hard to find a keener 
sportsman than Senator Proctor, a man more devoted to 
game protection and preservation, one with a higher sense 
of his responsibilities as citizen and United States Sena- 
tor, or with a more" scrupulous regard for the law. There 
are not many States in which the raccoon is a protected 
animal, and we fancy it would puzzle the average sports- 
man to say whether 'coons are or are not in season in 
September in any particular part of the country. Cer- 
tainly in bygone years early autumn was the great 'coon 
hunting season all through New England. If, as reported, 
Senator Proctor killed a 'coon in violation of the New- 
Hampshire statute for the protection of this ring-taUed 
inhabitant of the hollow, he is rather entitled to sympathy 
for having left his copy of t.h,e Game Laws in Brief at 
home. 
