DUIKERS AND SMALL ANTELOPES 567 



duiker or steinbok. The steinbok, no matter where it is, 

 always seeks to hide, and always lies down when it spies 

 danger, unless it thinks itself observed from near by. When 

 forced to run, it races off for a few hundred yards, and lies 

 down in another bit of cover. A Tommy lying down always 

 feels at a disadvantage, and springs to its feet at the sus- 

 picion of danger. A steinbok regards lying down as its natu- 

 ral attitude at the approach of danger. Time and again 

 we have seen a steinbok, when we were approaching from a 

 distance, lie down beside or behind some bush or tuft of 

 grass — it is astonishing how little cover will serve its needs 

 — and watch us with head erect. If we approached too 

 closely, or if it had been throughly alarmed and had already 

 run once, it would lie with its head outstretched. 



It is a very curious fact that an antelope which trusts so 

 much to cover and concealment and to escaping observation, 

 and which does not live in thick cover, yet possesses a reveal- 

 ing instead of a concealing coloration. The bright reddish 

 of the steinbok's coat harmonizes with no background in 

 which we have seen the animal, and never in our experience 

 tends to conceal it. Doubtless there are exceptional cases 

 where the coloration does tend to conceal it — there is no 

 conceivable type of coloration which might not once in sev- 

 eral thousand times harmonize with its environment — but 

 we never happened to come across such cases. If the little 

 animal was where it could be seen at all, and where any color 

 could reveal it, in our experience the bright reddish coat 

 always tended to reveal it. Yet no antelope trusts more 

 persistently to hiding, to escaping observation. We have 

 seen one when pursued slip round a small bush and lie flat 

 with head and neck outstretched; but its color was too con- 



