in markings, form, and color. Such cases are legion, and most of them are well known. I cite them here only to emphasize their difference from the principles of obliterative coloration, our theme.

The white rumps and tails of timid fleet mammals, the so-called "bannermarks," have a wonderful purely obliterative use, as Mr. Thayer has lately discovered. They blot out the beasts' forms against the sky when they flee before terrestrial enemies. In this, which must be considered their paramount function, they are truly background-picturing patterns, like almost all the rest. Close cousin to them, and no less wonderful in their perfect and simple potency, are the white patterns of back and face worn by some of the grubbing nocturnal carnivores, such as the skunks. Yet the skunk's brilliantly pied black-and-white costume has often been considered a preeminent example of conspicuous and warning coloration, a blazoned badge of the brute's noxious identity. This is the character in which the skunk's pattern has figured in many previous writings on the subject, and the discovery of the full and perfect obliterative use of this chief among supposed "showy" costumes is one of the most compelling details of the entire revelation. Figures 11, 12, 13, and 14, unaltered photographs of stuffed skunks posed out-of-doors, need but little explaining. Seen against the sky, the skunk's "white" is always very inconspicuous and often quite invisible. This is the case even in full daylight, and at night the effect is even better. Now the skunk is a nocturnal ground-beast, and preys on small terrestrial (and digging) animals of many sorts. Viewed from the low position of his little victims, he looms up against the sky, towering high and huge as an elephant would above a skunk. Then it is that his white pattern plays its wonderful obliterative part, disappearing utterly and leaving the separated black

1 In reality pale buff,-light dead-leaf-color-but so shiny as to be more than equivalent in brightness, in this view, to lusterless pure white.

2 The top-white patterns of skunks, deer, etc., are merely their participation in the law that animals in general wear only proportioned samples of all constant elements of that background against which they need not to show. Most ocean birds, feeding, virtually always, on the surface of sea or sand, wear mainly the white, or pearl-color of the sky against which their small victims must necessarily

patches to look like bushes, trees or rocks relieved against the sky. See Figures 13 and 14. The dangerous head of the grubbing hunter, held close to the ground, is obliterated for the little hunted groundbeasts it approaches, up to the last moment, by its lengthwise medial white stripe, which "carries down the sky" as if between bushes. Not only skunks, but badgers and most other terrestrial grubbing carnivores, wear some form of this white head-marking, at once the antithesis and the counterpart of the ruminant's white rump, which is a fleeing-mask.

Here, in the case of these two skunks, and of the white-sterned ruminants and rodents, we have a most notable vindication of the rule, which wider research still shows infallible, that the patterns of animals work for their concealment in the situations and aspects wherein it most profits them to be concealed. Sky-picturing is a widely prevalent element in obliterative patterns; witness the white stripes, flecks, and patches so generally worn by tree birds, and wanting on terrestrial thicket-haunters. All these markings prove to be perfect background-pictures, and in proportion as there is more or less of sky in an animal's normal background, from the average point of view of his enemies, so, as a rule, is there more or less of skypicturing in his pattern. Thus, when we come to the animals which might profit by concealment against unbroken sky, such as the deer and skunks above described, we find them furnished with big, immaculate "sky-patches" of extraordinary obliterative power. The reader may easily prove their power to his own satisfaction by experimenting at night with pieces of white and black paper or cloth. He will see then, if he has not before, that the widely accepted theories of "warning coloration," and "bannermarks" have been very gravely shaken by these latest revelations of the pure natural laws of obliterative pattern.

see them. On the other hand, terrestrial species that are never seen by any eye that concerns them against either sky, water, or snow, never have any top white. But let the species be one which, like the skunks, coons, and badgers, have, from their prey's point of view, the pied background of foliage and sky interstices, and, behold, the front they show their prey is pied in the same proportions a most perfect simulation of their average background. Among all animals that in any way profit by concealment this law is practically unfailing.

YOUNG man, whose temperamental vividness was subdued, but not obscured, by his conventional evening dress, was running a searching look over the guests at Mrs. Sargent's reception.

"Not there, and not there," he seemed to say, as from his position of vantage on the turn of the stair he examined one section of the crowded rooms after another.

He came down slowly, and as he made his progress toward his hostess, people turned to look at him. There was something about him which challenged attention, whether it lay in the somber curve of his still young mouth, or in the intensity of his look. His very atmosphere was charged with life, but with life passionate rather than exuberant.

"Who is he?" some one murmured. "Have n't you heard? Philip Hill. He is just back from Alaska-with a fortune."

"Oh! Was n't there some esclandre about him years ago?"

"Come, come! I said a fortune. You should train your memory to be more discrete."

Philip Hill, passing the open door of the library, had paused an instant, as though every unexplored corner teased him to a search; but a girl whom he did not know turned a startled and somewhat distressed face toward him from within the room, and he moved on. He had not seen the man who, beyond the angle of his vision, faced the girl.

"I should not have said that," the man was saying to the distressed girl; "but -you have been so kind that I forgot. I hoped that perhaps―"

"You promised not to bring that question up for a year," she said quickly.

"I know; but-it is hard to wait." He put down the volume that had been his pretext for bringing her here apart, and with his finger he traced nervously the lines of the tooling. "It means so much to me-if you would only just give me a word—”

"But a word would be everything! I asked you not to speak of it or make me think of it just so I might have time to be sure what word was the right one."

He lifted humble yet urgent eyes-the eyes of a man whose desperate need makes him press on against even more desperate odds.

"There is n't any one else, Lois?"
"Oh, no."

'And-you like me-a little? At least you don't dislike me? I know I'm not good enough, I'm only an ordinary man, and I 've never had the advantages-"

His very blundering touched something like chivalry in the girl's nature, as it often had before. If he did not mind for himself, she, for him, must not let him be so humiliated.

"It is n't that; you must n't say that, George," she urged hastily. "I have always liked you. I know how much you have done, and all that, and I honor you for it; but-"

“I—I 'd do anything in the world for you," he said urgently. "You'd never have to ask for anything twice. I would be very good to you, Lois."

She frowned a little. "I don't think I want you to say that, either. It would n't be a question of being comfortable with the man I-loved.' Her voice quivered at the word, and her face blossomed suddenly as at the touch of sunshine. It was only the quivering of her nature at the great mystery, but George

Webb, for all his humility, could not believe such tenderness to be impersonal. He looked up with sudden hope.

"Lois!"

"Quite true. And St. Andrews has no more disadvantages than any other agglomeration of two hundred thousand souls. But what are you going to do to

up."

"That will be in three months. Oh, Lois, how can I wait?"

MISS LOWRY, a lady whose fifty-odd years had not served to chill her interest in the game of life, watched to catch Philip Hill's eye, and then beckoned to him with her jeweled fan. She was one of the few people in St. Andrews who had known him in the pre-Alaskan days, and one of the fewer whom he might call his friends.

"You must n't act as though you thought the whole duty of man at a modern reception is to stand around and look picturesque. Come and entertain What have you been doing all evening?"

me.

Hill dropped into the chair beside her, and laughed with something of the mischievous amusement of a school-boy.

"I've been talking-a great deal. I have made up about twelve years' arrears. That 's merely counting the length of my stories. As to their tallness-I am not sure I have n't even drawn on my future."

"You don't mean to say you have been telling yarns to Lois Warren! An utter waste, I assure you."

"Which was Lois Warren?"

"The young woman yonder, near the azaleas. I saw you bring her an ice."

"Oh, is that her name?" He turned to look at the girl. "I'm going to get people horribly mixed. She somehow did n't make any definite impression on me. I suppose a peony would attract my barbarian attention sooner than a pinkand-white azalea."

Miss Lowry's quizzical eyes glinted. "Poor Lois! She 's from New England. Well, what else are you going to do now, besides mixing people up?"

A sudden veil dropped over the light behind Hill's eyes. With obvious ob

tuseness he echoed :

"Do?"

"Yes. Why did you come back to St. Andrews-especially?"

"One must live somewhere."

His veiled eyes still met hers smilingly, though some subtle change had taken all the carelessness out of his smile.

"Why should I have anything to do to George Webb-or with him?" "Philip, you have learned to be secretive."

"I have probably learned many ungracious things."

"But to me?"

"Dear Miss Lowry," he said quite softly, and looking away, "don't think that I have ever forgotten your goodness to a wretched boy."

"I am glad to have you admit that your memory has not failed you," she retorted dryly. "That being the case, what are you going to do to George Webb?"

He laughed in frank amusement.

"You melodramatic lady! What would you suggest? I'm terribly handicapped by the times and the manners of St. Andrews, in the first place. If I had him in Eagle City, now! But here, even with all the good will in the world, I can't very well challenge him to a duel, or provoke a fist-fight, or stab him of a dark night, or do anything else really satisfying to poetic justice. Do you see my way clear to doing anything more deadly than letting him alone?"

Miss Lowry looked at him with unconcealed dissatisfaction.

"Philip, if you think to pass yourself off to me as a milk-and-water young man, you are implying no compliment to my skill in physiognomy; and if you want my countenance-"

"In such a course as you are suggesting? Dear Miss Lowry, whatever opinion you may have of me, I think too highly of you to dream for a moment of involving you in any such blood-thirsty medievalism."

"How good of you!" She fell back from the attack for a moment, baffled, looking for a weak point in his defense. "Remember," she said, "I always respect a confidence, but if you refuse me your confidence I shall find out for myself-and finding 's keeping."

"Oh, if you will keep it-"