vinced, but that it has been greatly overworked in our time, and that more has been put upon it than it can bear, of this also I am convinced.

I think we are safe in saying that a bird is protectively colored when the color, as it were, strikes in, and the bird itself acts upon the theory that it is in a measure hidden behind its assimilative plumage. This is true of nearly all the grouse tribe. These birds seem instinctively to know the value of their imitative tints, and are tame or wild according as their tints do or do not match the snow on the ground. The snow keeps the secrets of the snow, and the earth keeps the secrets of the earth, but each tells upon the other. Sportsmen tell me that quail will not "lay" when there is snow upon the ground. The snow gives them away; it lights their covers in the weeds and the bog as with a lamp. At other times the quail will "lay" till the hunter almost steps upon them. His dog sometimes picks them up. What is the meaning of this behavior but that the bird feels hidden in the one case and not in the other? Moreover, the grouse are all toothsome; and this fact of the toothsomeness of some birds and the toughness and unsavoriness of others, such as the woodpecker, the crow tribe, gulls, divers, cormorants, and the like, has undoubtedly played some part in their natural history. But whether they are dull-colored because they are toothsome, or toothsome because they are dull

up

colored - who shall say? Which was first, the sweetness or the color? The flesh of the quail and the partridge having become very delectable and much sought after by many wild creatures, did Nature make compensation by giving them their assimilative plumage? or were the two facts inseparable from the first? Yet the flesh of the peacock is said to be as delicate as that of the turkey.

The sweetness of an animal's flesh is doubtless determined by its food. I believe no one eats the Western road-runner, though it is duller of color than the turkey. Its food is mice, snakes, lizards, centipedes, and other vermin.

Thus far I can follow the protective-colorists, but not much farther.

Wallace goes to the extent of believing that even nuts are protectively colored because they are not to be eaten. But without the agency of birds and the small rodents, the wingless nuts, such as chestnuts, acorns, hickory nuts, and butternuts, could never get widely scattered; so that if they were effectively concealed by their colors, this fact would tend to their extinction.

If the colors of animals were as vital a matter, and the result of the same adaptive and selective process, as their varied structures, which Darwin and Wallace teach, then it would seem to follow that those of the same habits and of the same or similar habitat would be similar or identical in

color, which is not commonly the case. Thus among the birds, the waders all have long legs and long necks, but they are not all of the same color. The divers all have short legs placed in the rear, but they vary greatly in color-markings. How greatly the ducks differ in coloration, though essentially the same in structure! Our tree warblers are of all hues and combinations of hues, though so alike in habit and form. The painted bunting in the Southwest is gaudily colored, while its congeners are all more plainly dressed.

In England the thrush that answers to our robin, being almost identical in form, manner, and habit, is black as a coal. The crow tribe are all built upon the same plan, and yet they show a very great diversity of colors. Why is our jay so showily colored, and the Canada jay so subdued in tint?

The hummingbirds do not differ much in their anatomy, but their tints differ as much as do those of precious stones. The woodpeckers show a variety of markings that cannot be accounted for upon any principle of utility or of natural selection. Indeed, it would seem as if in the colors of birds and mammals Nature gave herself a comparatively free hand, not being bound by the same rigid necessity as in their structures. Within certain limits, something like caprice or accident seems to prevail. The great law of assimilation, or harmonious blending, of which I shall presently have more to say, goes on,

but it is checked and thwarted and made sport of by other tendencies.

Then the principle of coloration of the same species does not always hold good in different parts of the earth. Our northern flycatchers are all of dull plumage, but in Mexico we find the vermilion flycatcher, with under parts of bright scarlet, and in Java is a flycatcher like a flame of fire. With us, as soon as a bird touches the ground it takes on some ground colors. All our ground-feeders are more or less ground-tinted. But in the East this is not to the same extent true. Thus our pigeons and doves are blue-gray and buff. In the Molucca Islands there is a blue and purple dove, and one species with coppery green plumage, a snow-white tail, and snow-white pendent feathers on the neck. Our thrushes are ground-feeders and are groundcolored. The ground thrushes of the Malay Archipelago are much more brilliantly marked. One species has the "upper parts soft green, the head jet black, with a stripe of blue and brown over the eye; at the base of the tail and on the shoulders are bands of bright silvery blue, and the under-sides are of delicate buff with a stripe of rich crimson bordered with black on the belly." Another ground thrush is velvety black above, relieved by a breast of pure white, shoulders of azure blue, and belly of vivid crimson one of the most beautiful birds of the East, Wallace says. The Eastern kingfishers are