n] FEATURES OF ENVIRONMENT 25 



coloured, but these very colours mingle with the 

 bright surroundings to a marvellous extent. Tropical 

 light can be so fierce and resplendent, that a whole 

 flock of bright parrots in a tree will simply vanish. 

 In a museum we find it hopeless to understand how 

 such conspicuous objects can ever manage to elude 

 discovery. 



If we now descend in our survey below the tree- 

 roof there are of course many creatures which live 

 habitually upon the branches or stems of the trees. 

 These have sombre tints, brown, speckled or barred. 

 Lastly, those which live on the ground-floor, or in the 

 basement, are mostly dark. It would be of no avail 

 to wear a beautiful dress in a badly lighted place. 



Another point concerning the coloration of 

 dwellers in forests is the pattern. Except when this 

 is more or less uniform, the ground-colour is broken 

 up by white or yellowish spots, arranged in several 

 longitudinal rows. Many snakes and lizards are thus 

 marked ; the young of many mammals pass through 

 a stage of this kind, notably those of deer, pigs, the 

 American tapir and those of the cat-tribe. There 

 are no striped lights in a forest ; what sunlight there 

 is, appears in the shape of little round disks, tiny 

 sun images, and these are let us put it boldly 

 stamped upon the skin. If we follow the same 

 kind of dark-skinned, white-spotted lizard out of 

 the forest into the savannah, into the grassland, its 



