The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-01-09
CAMOUFLACEIS IS
 NOW REAL ART IN GREAT WORLD WAR

ural History Museum in London there 1 are two little wooden ducks, Roger | Pocock says in an article on "The l Art of Concealent" They are dressed | in gray flannel and each housed in a glass case with a gray flannel back 1 ground. No. 1 duck is dressed in plain gray flannel and you can see her plainly at 100 wards because of the dark shadows cast bv her neck and body. as well as by the bright ness of her back No. 3 duck is slightly whitened underneath to coun- teract the shadows, and slightly bronzed on top to counteract the light. Even at six feet the show case appears to be empty There is no sign of a duck. No hawk, no fox, no sportsman with scatter-gun and a small dog could possibly discover or kill the invisible duck unless she moved or made foolish quaclzs to guide her enemies. A great many years ago I wrote to the lords of the admiralty imploring thtem to go and see the invisible duck who could teach them priceless lessons in the art of concealing batt1eships and cruisers. They promised faithfully. so I have no doubt they called and left their cards.
 Am I giving away secret, or let ting cats out of bags? From all hear the British navy of today Can show the invisible duck that she is mere beginner in the art of canou- flage. In the current number of Punch you may see a tramp steamer impersonating a German sausage works That is joke, but the Brit ish fleet delights in playing practical Jokes or. the Germans. You may have
 noticed, for example, that the U+boat
 campaign is not g. complete success,
 and that the British lion does not as
 yet sit up to beg for mercy.
 If you would study camouf1age by
 land go look at the wild animals. See
 how the tawny lion and striped tiger
 are painted to resemble the tall vel low bunch grass of the jungle. The
 giraffe is painted exactly like the
 f1ickering lights among Che acacia.
 trees on which he feeds. The leopard,
 the taguar and all spotted cats, the
 spotted deer, and the dappled horse
 are painted to initiate light under a shady tree The pig is patched pink and brown like the sunshine and the
 shadow of the denser woods. The ele- phant is painted ha7y brown like the great trees of the deepest forest. So all the wild beasts are colored for concealment in their natural land
 scaDe. while many of them change their clothes with the seasons, wear | ing white for the snowy winters, brown for the torrid summer. In ex- actIy the same way our British ar
 mics are clothed in tawney dun for tropics, and in khaki for the warfare
 in temperate regions.
 The khaki blends exactly with the . grasses and timber of the northwest ern Europe. As for the German field gray, it is a capital imitation of the U shadows cast by woods Dr entrench- ! ments on a sunny day, and blends very nicely either with rain or fog
 The horizon blue of the French ar
 mics tones well into average land = scape. All are useful colors. In the early part of the war the British made one mistake. The service cap WaS y kept taut and smart with a wire hOoI
 inside the rim of it's flat top. St = stretched, the cloth reflected sundgh
 and presented fine target for enemy - marksmen, until we found out wha
 was wrong. Then we removed the
 wire, and the cap was no longer = target.
 In the old days our bell tents made
 excellent targets for heavy artillery
 being visible at a distance of man! 7. miles. NOW all of them are paintek t with special sort of distemper, ant = the bolder the patches, the stronge, 0 the colors the better. Strong paint d ing breaks the contours of any oo l, feet, and so not only tents, but guns l. limbers, wagon covers and huts ar' e made to look just like the patched l. and broken ground of camps ant U roadways.