ways inevitably tend to conceal, has waited till now to be discovered.

Two main oversights have caused the whole misconception as to the concealing effect of pattern on animals: one, the failing to study an animal's markings from the viewpoint, always, as a matter of course, of the animal whose sight was to be deceived; the other, the perfectly fatal confounding of detection with identification after detection.

Any pattern having color notes that are conspicuous from man's point of view insists upon recording itself upon men's minds, and has come to be considered as intrinsically conspicuous. Take, for instance, the part a skunk may play in our minds. We probably detect him oftenest by noticing a white patch going about at twilight in perhaps the neighboring field as we look down on it from our piazza. For this reason this

little beast has been set down, without further investigation, as conspicuous; while the case really is that nature has colored him for concealment from the small creatures on which he feeds, and above which he looms against the sky. (One would guess that because this white patch is so easily seen by hawks overhead nature has given him other means for his own protection.)

Exactly contrary to the conceptions of Darwin and his followers, pattern conceals its wearer everywhere against all backgrounds in direct ratio to its strength, i. e., the degree of difference between the notes that compose it.

Monochrome, no matter how gray, reveals its wearer against all backgrounds whatsoever (and most of all if these are monochrome) except a background which is an absolute repetition of itself. (Of course it is the practically universal countershading of the world's animal life that alone could give it a monochrome aspect, changing the look of solidity to that of a flat surface.) Anybody will see at a glance that a monochrome area in the scene, having the shape of man, horse or bird, will

catch the eye whenever it does not absolutely match its background, whereas, if the countless details of the scene recurred in the form of patterns right across this man-, horse- or birdform, this form would be buried under this counterfeit of the

scene.

On the other hand, the most monochrome of backgrounds opposes no difficulty to the concealing effect of pattern on an object seen against it, because some one of the colors of the pattern is almost sure more nearly to match the background than the other colors of it, and consequently it will seem to belong to the background rather than to the object.

A BROOK SCENE PHOTOGRAPHED THROUGH A DUCK-SHAPED STENCIL.

In cases where the colors of the pattern are all of them characteristic of the region, the deceptive imitation of the background is overwhelming; yet this resultant background-imitation is practically the universal accomplishment of animals' patterns. I have been left alone in the world to point this out; yet this whole fact is simply the ABC of all painter craft. Every painter in the world could have told you all about it the