V GAY PLUMES AND DULL I OT long since, one of our younger naturalists NOT sent me a photograph of a fawn in a field of daisies, and said that he took the picture to show what he considered the protective value of the spots. The white spots of the fawn did blend in with the daisies, and certainly rendered the fawn less conspicuous than it would have been without them, but I am slow to believe that the fawn has spots that it may the better hide in a daisy-field, or, in fact, anywhere else, or that the spots have ever been sufficiently protective to have materially aided in the perpetuity of the deer species. What use they have, if any, I do not know, any more than I know what use the spots on the leopard or the giraffe have, or the stripes on the zebra. I can only conjecture concerning their use. The panther does not have spots, and seems to get along just as well without them. The young of the moose and the caribou and the pronghorn are not spotted, and yet their habitat is much the same as that of the deer. Why some forest animals are uniformly dark colored, while others are more or less brilliantly striped or spotted, is a question not easily answered. It is claimed that spotted and striped species are more diurnal in their habits, and frequent bushes and open glades, while the dusky species are more nocturnal, and frequent dense thickets. In a general way this is probably true. A dappled coat is more in keeping with the day than with the night, and with bushes and jungles rather than with plains or dense forests. But whether its protective value, or the protective value of the dusky coat, is the reason for its being, is another question. This theory of the protective coloration of animals has been one of the generally accepted ideas in all works upon natural history since Darwin's time. It assumes that the color of an animal is as much the result of natural selection as any part of its structure - natural selection picking out and preserving those tints that were the most useful in concealing the animal from its enemies or from its prey. If in this world no animal had ever preyed upon another, it is thought that their colors might have been very different, probably much more bizarre and inharmonious than they are at present. Now I am not going to run amuck upon this generally accepted theory of modern naturalists, but I do feel disposed to shake it up a little, and to see, if I can, what measure of truth there is in it. That there is a measure of truth in it I am con |