VIII 
ORIGIN AND USES OF COLOUR IN ANIMALS 
199 
and having already discussed those protective colours which 
serve to harmonise animals with their general environment, 
we have to consider only those cases in which the colour 
resemblance is more local or special in its character. 
Special or Local Colour Adaptations. 
This form of colour adaptation is generally manifested by 
markings rather than by colour alone, and is extremely pre¬ 
valent both among insects and vertebrates, so that we shall 
be able to notice only a few illustrative cases. Among our 
native birds we have the snipe and woodcock, whose markings 
and tints strikingly accord with the dead marsh vegetation 
among which they live; the ptarmigan in its summer dress is 
mottled and tinted exactly like the lichens which cover the 
stones of the higher mountains ; while young unfledged plovers 
are spotted so as exactly to resemble the beach pebbles among 
which they crouch for protection, as beautifully exhibited in 
one of the cases of British birds in the Natural History 
Museum at South Kensington. 
In mammalia, Ave notice the frequency of rounded spots on 
forest or tree haunting animals of large size, as the forest 
deer and the forest cats; while those that frequent reedy or 
grassy places are striped vertically, as the marsh antelopes 
and the tiger. I had long been of opinion that the brilliant 
yelloAV and black stripes of the tiger Avere adaptive, but have 
only recently obtained proof that it is so. An experienced 
tiger-hunter, Major Walford, states in a letter, that the haunts 
of the tiger are invariably full of the long grass, dry and pale 
yelloAV for at least nine months of the year, which covers the 
ground wherever there is water in the rainy season, and he 
adds : “ I once, while following up a wounded tiger, failed for 
at least a minute to see him under a tree in grass at a distance 
of about tAventy yards—jungle open—but the natives saAv 
him, and I eventually made him out Avell enough to shoot 
him, but even then I could not see at what part of him I Avas 
aiming. There can be no doubt Avhatever that the colour of 
both the tiger and the panther renders them almost invisible, 
especially in a strong blaze of light, Avhen among grass, and 
one does not seem to notice stripes or spots till they are 
dead.” It is the black shadows of the vegetation that 
