w, in
the latter case, any disguise of form or color could be brought about.

Our shrike, at times, murders little birds and eats out their brains,
and it has not the form, or the color, or the eye of a bird of prey,
and thus probably deceives its victims, but there is no reason to
believe that this guise is the result of any sort of mimicry.

V. THE COLORS OF FRUITS

Mr. Wallace even looks upon the nuts as protectively colored, because
they are not to be eaten. But without the agency of the birds and the
squirrels, how are the heavy nuts, such as the chestnut, beechnut,
acorn, butternut, and the like, to be scattered? The blue jay is often
busy hours at a time in the fall, planting chestnuts and acorns, and
red squirrels carry butternuts and walnuts far from the parent trees,
and place them in forked limbs and holes for future use. Of course,
many of these fall to the ground and take root. If the protective
coloration of the nuts, then, were effective, it would defeat a
purpose which every tree and shrub and plant has at heart, namely, the
scattering of its seed. I notice that the button-balls on the
sycamores are protectively colored also, and certainly they do not
crave concealment. It is true that they hang on the naked trees till
spring, when no concealment is possible. It is also true that the jays
and the crows carry away the chestnuts from the open burrs on the
trees where no color scheme would conceal them. But the squirrels find
them upon the ground even beneath the snow, being guided, no doubt, by
the sense of smell.

The hickory nut is almost white; why does it not seek concealment
also? It is just as helpless as the others, and is just as
sweet-meated. It occurs to me that birds can do nothing with it on
account of its thick shell; it needs, therefore, to attract some
four-footed creature that will carry it away from the parent tree, and
this is done by the mice and the squirrels. But if this is the reason
of its whiteness, there is the dusky butternut and the black walnut,
both more or less concealed by their color, and yet having the same
need of some creature to scatter them.

The seeds of the maple, and of the ash and the linden, are obscurely
colored, and they are winged; hence they do not need the aid of any
creature in their dissemination. To say that this is the reason of
their dull, unattractive tints would be an explanation on a par with
much that one hears about th