WHITE ANIMALS.
PTO THE Enrroa 'OD THE "SPECTATOR:1 Si,—In the interesting paper on "White Animals" which you published on December 21st last the-writer says : "It is almost as difficult to see a flock of gulls resting on an ordinary dimpled bearing sea as it is to see partridges in a ploughed field, so closely do the grey and white match the broken lights on the wave slopes and hollows," in this follow- ing Wallace-and other writers. I made an almost, identical statement in a natural history paper written a year or two ago, but rewrote it in a directly opposite sense before publica- tion. A year's daily observation of sea birds at the Land's End convinced me that white, so far from making the birds invisible in a " dimpled " or any other sea, inevitably reveals their whereabouts. It is probably a recognition mark rather than a means of concealment. Is the writer on "White Animals" in this instance simply following other naturalists, or has he "verified his references" F—I am, Sir, Sze.,
JOHN ISABELL.
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