Zoologist Hugh B. Cott and WWII camouflaged cannon

In the past we've often blogged about a variety of camouflage called countershading, which was first discussed at length by Abbott H. Thayer, c1897. Later, it was also featured in a famous book by British zoologist and camoufleur Hugh B. Cott, titled Adaptive Coloration in Animals (1940). Cott was also highly adept at scientific illustration, using a method called stippling, and his book is a rich resource of that. Above is a series of pen-and-ink drawings he made that are intended to show the effectiveness of the application of countershading to the barrel of a cannon.

Also shown here is a World War II photograph that documents a demonstration by Cott. It shows two camouflaged cannon, one of which is disruptively painted, while the second is countershaded. The disrupted cannon is easily seen. It is nearly dead center of the photograph, positioned on the railroad track, and pointing toward the upper left. By following the track toward the upper right, you can see the second (countershaded) cannon, the barrel of which is all but invisible.

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OTHER WAYS TO APPLY CAMOUFLAGE in The Des Moines News (Des Moines IA), August 15, 1918, p. 4—

Wouldn’t be a bad idea for gents to camouflage their eyes so they’ll look wide open for Sunday mornings in church.

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Try the Camouflage on These

On the piano next door that’s hopped every time you try to rest. Break in some time when they’re away and camouflage it to look like an umbrella stand, or a fireplace.

Too bad, too, there isn’t any way to camouflage the warbling of that oh, ho. ho, ha, ha, hee, hee, damsel who thinks she’s Mrs. Caruso.

And that bugle practicing kid across the street. The best way is to camouflage the bugle with an ax.

The auto that’s always kicking up a fuss and is always being repaired and tried out when you’re trying to get full weight on your sleep at night and in the morning. Sneak out some midnight, drag it in to alley and camouflage it to look like a pile of garbage, then push it next to the ash can so the garbage chauffeur will haul it away with the rest of the rubbish.

Wonders can be worked with the camouflage art.

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Camouflage Some More

What a merry bunch of camouflagers we are. The first of the month when bills come and collectors knuckle the front door, some of us are camouflage so that we are out to the collector.

Some camouflage themselves so that the other people just envy their easy sailing and wish they could afford a car and a maid, but most of the time the car isn’t paid for and the house is mortgaged to get it and they just have their head out of the water when it’s calm. Great stuff, this camouflage.

Restaurant hash is another gag that gets camouflaged to a frazzle.

Gristle, leftover meat from uneaten orders, etc., come under the nom de plume of “choice bits.” Water is another article that’s camouflaged muchly, as milk, oyster stew, circus leomade, and many other fine works.

For a video introduction to countershading, see <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLX5YQF-H3k>

WWI Camouflage Illustrations by Algernon Black 1918

Algernon Black (1918)

At this point, we have no information about a WWI-era British illustrator named Algernon Black. But several days ago, we ran across a two-part magazine article by Raymond Raife titled Camouflage and Q-Boats: Telling the Splendid Story of the VC's of our Mystery-Ships. Published in the annual compilation of a London-based periodical called The Boy's Own Paper (Vol 41, 1918-1919), the lengthy article is accompanied by about ten drawings pertaining to camouflage, signed by Black. We've reproduced a few of them above and below on this blog post.

Robert Williams Wood | Carrot in Camouflage

Robert W. Wood, How to Tell the Birds From the Flowers

Above One of the comparative illustrations in How To Tell the Birds from the Flowers: A Revised Manual of Flornithology for Beginners, with verses and illustrations by Robert Williams Wood (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1917). A later edition was published by Dover Publications in 1959. Wood (1868-1955) was a prominent American scientist. In his children's book, each comparative image is accompanied by a nonsense verse. This one reads as follows—

The Parrot and the Carrot one may easily confound,
They're very much alike in looks and similar in sound,
We recognize the Parrot by his clear articulation,
For carrots are unable to engage in conversation.

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Anon, The Versatile Carrot in the Urbana Daily Courier (Urbana IL), May 28, 1919—

There is nothing like a war to change the status of things. Look, for example, at the humble carrot. Before the war it was one of the lowliest of all the vegetables, seldom used except for stews or New England boiled dinners, but it certainly has been doing its bit in the culinary line recently. It has become a past master in the art of camouflage. Grated raw, it is said to be a very good substitute for eggs in certain things. Little slices dried become raisins and currants, and other bits, treated a little differently, masquerade as candied orange and lemon peel. Orange marmalade and certain kinds of jam are made of them, and large chances of them boiled and sugared make wonderful candied fruits of very kind—pineapples, pears, apricots, cherries—and are used by many caterers to give their war cakes and puddings a prosperous and festive look.

Der Tater Tot | Dead Potatoes Camouflaged

Spurious butterfly species (top)

Above Two examples of the same butterfly, known as the Brimstone Butterfly (Gonepteryx rhamni). However, the one at the top has been altered. It was sent by British butterfly collector William Charlton to London entomologist James Petiver in 1702. Sixty years later, it was examined by Carl Linnaeus, who (not noticing that the large dark spots had been added with paint) concluded that it was a new species, which he named Papilio ecclipsis. Today, the hoax is known as the Charlton Brimstone Butterfly.

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Anon, THIEF USED CAMOUFLAGE: Job Monaghan's Potatoes Were Stolen in Boston Sunday Post, October 14, 1917, p. 10—

When Job Monaghan, a Wellesley [MA] mason, went to his vegetable garden yesterday to spade up a plentiful harvest of potatoes, which he confidently anticipated to find beneath a luxuriant growth of potato vines, he was confronted instead with a camouflage in his potato patch.

Having prepared a storage for the tubers, Job took his trusty spade and proceeded to dig in the potato patch for the long-waited-for spud. The first vine dug out unearthed not a single "tater." Thinking they had grown to an enormous size and had by their sheer weight sunk deeply into the soil he excavated as far as the handle of his spade would permit. He failed to uncover a single potato. The second vine was excavated the same as the first and a similar result followed.

Excavating-and-discovering-nothing was kept up until 85 vines had been accounted for. At this stage he claims to have lost count, because of his perplexity in failing to explain the vegetable phenomena.

He leaned on his hoe and gave himself up to meditation. After a little reflection he concluded that somebody had deftly extracted the tubers and had spruced the vines that they might stand life-like and be a deception. Some expert in the art of potato camouflage had done the work after first poaching the highly-prized spud.

"It surely was a work of art," contemplated Job Monaghan. "That man has missed his vocation. He worked with high skill in the potato trenches and deceived me with the alluring idea that a wealth of tubers lay awaiting my spade under the stout vines. His place is in France and his line is placing camouflage as a delusion to the German riflemen."

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Anon, CAMOUFLAGE REPLACES STRONG ARM IN UNDERWORLD in Logansport Pharus Reporter, November 24, 1919, p. 12—

NEW YORK, Nov. 24—Strong arm methods are considered antiquated in New York's thuggery circles. Camouflage and the double-cross have supplanted the "rough stuff."

This is the information gained by Assistant District Attorney John F. Joyce in an interview with Charles Gless and Joe Hylan, ex-prize fighters, held as material witnesses in the killing of Harry Issacs, a laundryman. The prisoners told Joyce:

"Nowadays when a guy's hired to do up another guy he goes to that guy, they makes a deal, the guy to be done up camouflages with court plaster and maybe an arm in a sling, and then the strong arm guy brings round the guy what hired him, points out the 'damage' to the camouflaged guy, collects the coin, and splits with the lad what's camouflaged. See?"

Baseball Players Camouflaged as Camoufleurs

Fred J. Hoertz, two dazzle-painted ships (1918)

Above Fred J. Hoertz, "One of Our Largest Colliers Coaling a Warship," published as the cover of Scientific American Vol CXIX No 14, October 5, 1918.

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At first, it may seem that camouflage has little if anything to do with baseball. In earlier posts, we've shared a couple of the moments when the two have overlapped.

But here's another one: In 1918, during World War I, the US War Department established a military service policy that became known as the "work or fight rule." It required that able-bodied, "draft-eligible" men must either be employed in work that was "essential" or risk being drafted. It was also decided that working as a baseball player was "non-essential."

So what does this have to do with camouflage? It seems that a scheme was developed by which certain baseball players (who played in a baseball league that was sponsored by various shipyards) would show up for work at harbors as ship camouflage painters, which was of course indisputably "essential." This was reported in an article with the headline BILL LAI IS CALLED TO WORK OR FIGHT in the Chester Times (Chester PA), July 9, 1918, p. 10. Here's an excerpt—

…State Senator Calvin Page, of Portsmouth NH [reported] that the ball nines [apparently, an alternate term at the time for baseball players] at the Portsmouth Navy Yard and the Shattuck ship-building plant in Maine were composed of college men who were down on the payroll as "painters." According to Senator Page these "painters" carried two pails of paint a day to workmen, and spent the rest of the time at baseball.

"I shall look into the ball nines situation at Hog Island and other plants in Delaware County," said [Emergency Fleet Corporation Vice-President Howard] Coonley, "and if I discover that there are any 'camouflage ship workers' on the ball nines such as Senator Page describes, they will have to go."

Abbott Thayer and Background-Picturing

Background-picturing experiment with G.H. Thayer painting

Above Roy R. Behrens (©2015), an experiment using Adobe Photoshop software in an attempt to replicate a camouflage effect that artist/naturalists Abbott Handerson Thayer and Gerald Handerson Thayer (father and son) referred to as background picturing. The initial illustration (top left) is a watercolor painting by Gerald Thayer that was originally reproduced in Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (1909). The actual painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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The following is an excerpt (in reference to the image above) from an as-yet unpublished essay by Roy R. Behrens, titled "Seeing Through Camouflage: Abbott Thayer, Background-Picturing and the Use of Cut-Out Silhouettes" (©2015)—

Years ago, I published an article in which I suggested that Abbott Thayer had anticipated a computer-based method of working on multiple solutions to the same art or design composition, by which we use the SaveAs command on computers.• In drafting this article, it occurred to me that he may also have anticipated another digital practice, as suggested by background-picturing. This can best be understood by looking at a series of illustrations.

The first of these illustrations is an unaltered reproduction of a watercolor painting by Gerald Thayer, titled Male Ruffed Grouse in Forest [top left]. First published in full-color in in 1909 in Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, it is a masterful demonstration of the intricacies of background-picturing, or (figuratively speaking) of “seeing through” an animal as if it were transparent. In the next two illustrations, the woodland setting [top right] and the bird [bottom left] have been selected and removed, using Adobe Photoshop. In the final stage [bottom right], I have instructed the software to fill the empty silhouette of the bird, using a setting of ContentAware, based on information in the shapes and colors in the background. The result is surely successful, albeit less than equivalent to what the Thayers intended, since the source of this solution is a single particular background and not, as they hypothesized, an average of “innumerable landscapes.”

• See R.R. Behrens, “Abbott H. Thayer’s anticipation of a computer-based method of working” in Leonardo. Vol 34 No 1 (2001), pp. 19-20. Available online here. See also www.AbbottThayer.com and "Abbott H. Thayer's Vanishing Ducks."

Book Review | America's Other Audubon

Book Review
America's Other Audubon
by Joy M. Kiser
Princeton Architectural Press, New York NY 2012
192 pp., illus. 4 b/w & 68 col. Trade, $45.00
ISBN 978-1-61689-059-9.

America's Other Audubon is a new large-format album of little-known ornithological plates by an all but unknown artist named Genevieve Estelle Jones (1847-1879). Her illustrations were originally published as hand-colored lithographs in 1886, just 10 years after she first saw an exhibition of John James Audubon's astonishing lithographs (Birds of America) at the World's Fair in Philadelphia. more>>>