Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Camouflaged Cow Conundrums

Above One of the drawings from a book of spurious mimicry by American physicist Robert Williams Wood, titled How To Tell The Birds From The Flowers and Other Wood-Cuts. New York: Duffield and Co, 1917. Public domain. Here is the accompanying verse—

The cowry seems to be, somehow,
A sort of mouth-piece for the Cow:
A speaking likeness one might say,
Which I've endeavored to portray.

•••

GAMBLER "SMITH" PROFITS BY ARMY CAMOUFLAGE in Los Angeles Herald, May 26, 1919—

ELYRIA, OHIO—"John Smith" had read of the tricks of camouflage employed in "no man's land" in Europe. When police raided a craps game in a local meat market they checked one shy on a count of the prisoners. "Smith" had crawled into a dead cow.

•••

CAMOUFLAGE TOUCH in Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, New South Wales), July 31, 1942, p. 4—

NEW YORK—An American censor has censored a child's drawing of a cow. A three-year-old Cincinnati girl sent the drawing to her father, an army captain, stationed at Panama.

The censor returned the drawing with this note: "It is against military regulations to mail outside the continental limits of the United States drawings of any public buildings."