CAMOUFLAGE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4559, 13 April 1942, Page 2

CAMOUFLAGE

USE OF PIGMENT AND PAINT “ The use of pigment and paint in camouflage is perfectly well understood. Its general principles have been worked out not by physicists or by artists, but by biologists—not the biologist who works in a laboratory or a museum, but the biologist who in nature, particularly in tropical nature, is endeavouring to find out the camouflage devices which have been evolved in the course of ages in the neverending warfare between wild animals in their struggle for existence. “ If you go into any museum you will see some of the most marvellous cases of camouflage, in the form of small creatures which imitate green leaves. With larger objects, totally different methods are required. You find small creatures show the most exquisite green colouring, so as to be invisible against green vegetation, but you do not find large animals coloured in that way. “ The camouflage of the leopard or jaguar is adapted to it when it is that distance from its prey just before it goets into its final crouch. The camouflage of the zebra. is so arranged that it comes into play at the same sori of distance which saves it from the prowling leopard. “ These, then, are the main principles that nature has worked out, and these are the principles that govern the effectiveness of all war camouflage. The working out of these ideas Was entirely the work of biologists. These instructions which to-day are as effective as ever should be acted upon by those responsible for camouflage. “ Every one of us who looks at pictures in the illustrated papers sees guns, ships, and all kinds of instruments of war in which the camouflage is absolutely wrong.”—Sir James Graham Kerr, M.P-, in the House of Commons.