THE COLORATION OF LARGE ANIMALS 9 



exception — namely, the observation made several years ago 

 that zebras standing on the open veldt in bright moonlight 

 are practically invisible at a short distance — must, however, 

 be made to this sweeping assertion. And it is scarcely 

 too much to say that this important observation — which 

 applies also, I believe, to a considerable extent to the 

 same animals in daylight — has formed the starting-point 

 of modern ideas with regard to the purport and meaning 

 of many types of mammalian coloration. 



Before alluding in detail to these ideas and theories, in 

 order to show what has been done and what remains to 

 be done in this line of research, it may be well to point 

 out that, with the aforesaid exception of the zebras, practi- 

 cally all our conclusions with regard to the purport of the 

 coloration of most of the larger mammals have been drawn 

 from the examination of stuffed specimens or skins, sup- 

 plemented by observations upon domesticated animals, or 

 species living in a semi-domesticated state in parks or 

 zoological gardens. With regard to foreign species kept 

 in parks or menageries, the observations are not, in most 

 cases, of any real value, on account of the circumstances 

 that the animals are living under changed conditions, and 

 not amid their natural surroundings. When skins are once 

 deposited in a museum the naturalist has no means what- 

 ever of ascertaining by actual experiment how their 

 coloration harmonises, or otherwise, with their natural 

 environment, all that he can do being to glean as much 

 as possible with regard to the latter from the accounts of 

 eye-witnesses, and to draw his conclusions accordingly. 

 Something might doubtless be done if it were permissible 

 to take the skins into the woods and open country and 

 test their conspicuousness or invisibility by experiment ; 

 but even such experiments cannot, in most cases at any 



