510 
APPENDIX E 
birds, the coloration can never be protective or concealing; as regards 
others, it may under certain rare combinations of conditions, like those 
set forth in some of Mr. Thayer's ingenious but misleading colored 
pictures* serve, for concealment or protection, but in an infinitely larger 
number of cases it serves simply to advertise and attract attention to the 
wearers. As regards these cases, and countless others, Mr. Thayer's 
theories seem to me without substantial foundation in fact, and other 
influences than those he mentions must be responsible for the color¬ 
ation. It may be that his theories really do not apply to a very large 
number of animals which are colored white, or are pale in tint, beneath. 
For instance, in the cases of creatures like those snakes and mice^—^where 
the white or pale tint beneath can never be seen by either their foes or 
their prey—this ‘‘counter-shading" may be due to some cause wholly 
different from anything concerned with protection or concealment. 
There are other problems of coloration for which Mr. Thayer pro¬ 
fesses to give an explanation where this explanation breaks down for a 
different reason. The cougar's coloration, for instance, is certainly in a 
high degree concealing and protective, or at any rate it is such that it 
does not interfere with the animal's protecting itself by concealment, for 
the cougar is one of the most elusive of creatures, one of the most difficult 
to see, either by the hunter who follows it or by the animal on which it 
preys. But the cougar is found in every kind of country^—in northern 
pine woods, in thick tropical forests, on barren plains and among rocky 
mountains. Mr. Thayer in his introduction states that “one may read 
on an animal's coat the main facts of his habits and habitat, without 
ever seeing him in his home." It would be interesting to know how he 
would apply this statement to the cougar, and, if he knew nothing about 
the animal, tell from its coat which specimen lived in a Wisconsin pine 
forest, which among stunted cedars in the Rocky Mountains, which on 
the snow-line of the Andes, which in the forest of the Amazon, and which 
on the plains of Patagonia. With which habitat is the cougar's coat 
supposed especially to harmonize ? A lioness is colored like a cougar, 
and in Africa we found by actual experience that the very differently 
colored leopard and lioness and cheetah and serval were, when in pre¬ 
cisely similar localities, equally difficult to observe. It almost seems as 
* Some of the pictures are excellent, and undoubtedly put the facts truthfully and 
clearly; others portray as normal conditions which are wholly abnormal and exceptional, 
and are therefore completely misleading. 
