hunter, to remain perfectly silent and motionless, and it requires the
keenest eyes to make them out among the leaves. In fact, the very
beauty of their singular plumage, which makes the argus-pheasant so
marked and attractive an object when side by side with other birds, is
the very thing which, amid the foliage of trees, renders it so difficult
to be seen. Ocellated as the bird is all over its body, wings, and
tail, the general-effect is such as rather to conceal it. A disk of the
same size of an unbroken colour, even though the tints be less
brilliant, is far more likely to arrest the eye-glance. Besides, the
collected foliage of the trees, when gazed at from beneath, presents a
species of ocellation, to which that of the argus-pheasant is in some
way assimilated. This may be a provision of nature, for the protection
of this beautiful and otherwise helpless bird; for it is no great
creature at a flight, with all its fine plumes; and, but for its power
of thus concealing itself, would easily fall a prey to the sportsman.

Naturalists often, and, perhaps, oftener hunters, have noted this
adaptation of the colour of wild animals to their haunts and habits.
The jaguars, the leopards, and panthers, whose bright, yellow skins,
beautifully spotted as they are, would seem to render them most
conspicuous objects, are, in reality, the most difficult to be perceived
amid the haunts which they inhabit. An animal of equal size, and of the
dullest colouring, provided it were uniform, would be more easily seen
than they. Their very beauty renders them invisible; since their
numerous spots, interrupting the uniformity of colour, breaks up the
large disk of their bodies into a hundred small ones, and even destroys,
to the superficial glance, the form which would otherwise betray their
presence.

For some such reason then the argus-pheasant is most difficult to be
seen, when once settled on his perch among the leaves and twigs of the
trees. But though himself not observed, he sees all that passes below.
He is well named. Although the eyes all over his body be blind, he
carries a pair in his head, that rival those of the famed watchman from
whom he borrows his surname. He keeps the sportsman well in sight; and
should the latter succeed in espying him, the argus knows well when he
is discovered, and the moment a cock clicks or a barrel is poised
upward, he is off with a loud whirr that causes the woods to ring.

But, as al