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His finest asset was a gift of Nature a sort of protective colouration which enabled him to hide in the background of commonplaceness and do his work with an assurance which would not have been possible had he worn an air of assurance. In short and in fine, Mullinix no more resembled the traditional hawkshaw than Miss Mildred Smith resembled the fashionable conception of a fashionable artist.
John would play his setting of St Ambrose's hymn, "Veni redemptor gentium," if Mr Hare would go to the bellows, and feeling as if he were being turned into ridicule, Mr Hare took his place at the handle; and he found it even more embarrassing to give an opinion on the religiosity of the music, than on the archaeological colouration of the bishops in the window.
And yet with the exception of that dry husk of knowledge, concerning size, form and colouration, which classifiers and cataloguers obtain from specimens, very little indeed scarcely anything, in fact is known about the Tree-creepers; and it would not be too much to say that there are many comparatively obscure and uninteresting species in Europe, any one of which has a larger literature than the entire Tree-creeper family.
So plastic are organisms, and so great is the number of living things in the earth, that it is not surprising that very similar forms should sometimes arise independently and in different parts of the globe. Several instances of this fortuitous resemblance are cited in Beddard's Animal Colouration; others are cited in The Making of Species by Finn, and myself.
This cockerel, whose male sex glands had been exchanged for female ones, developed the female body, and colouration so completely that expert breeders of the strain pronounced it a female. He found that simply removing the female sex glands invariably led to the development of spurs and male plumage. But simple removal of the male sex glands did not alter plumage.
Long before it works up to man we see this amazing force stemming an uncountable number of attacks, and meeting ruinous conditions with daring contrivances. For one kind of danger it develops a shell, for another a sting, for another a poison, for another a protective colouration. To breathe in the sea it puts forth gills, and makes lungs for itself when stranded on the land.
This same work, in an article on protective colouration, lays emphasis on the statement that among pupa cases artificially fastened to different objects out of doors, "the elimination was ninety-two per cent on fences where pupae were conspicuous, as against fifty-two per cent among nettles, where they were inconspicuous."
The Brazilians call the species the Tamandua bandeira, or the Banner Anteater, the term banner being applied in allusion to the curious colouration of the animal, each side of the body having a broad oblique stripe, half grey and half black, which gives it some resemblance to a heraldic banner. It has an excessively long slender muzzle, and a wormlike extensile tongue.
Only when very distant and in heat shimmer, or in certain half lights of evening, does their so-called "protective colouration" seem to be in working order, and even then they are always quite visible to the least expert hunter's scrutiny. It is not difficult to kill a zebra, though sometimes it has to be done at a fairly long range.
Success thus takes the form of a series of waves of protective colouration; failure is a succession of unmaskings. The aspirant must first learn to imitate exactly the aspect and behaviour of the group he seeks to penetrate. There follows notice. There follows toleration. There follows acceptance.
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