COLORATION 71 



proves anything, either that stripes are not conceaHng, or 

 that if they are conceaHng then natural selection has only 

 been able to develop them in one-twentieth of the animals 

 to which they would have been of benefit. Nor is this all. 

 Of the groups of African antelopes which carry stripes, two, 

 the bushbucks and the elands, seem to be slowly losing 

 them. The centre of development of these two groups 

 was probably the African equatorial forest, from which 

 both have spread eastward and southward. The farther 

 from the forest they go the less evident the stripes become, 

 until in the South African eland the stripes completely 

 vanish, and in the males of the East and South African 

 bushbucks they practically vanish. Yet where conditions 

 happen to be identical the practically monochrome bushbuck 

 and eland prosper as well as their striped and spotted kins- 

 men. In the Lado we found the non-striped duiker even 

 harder to see than the harnessed bushbuck of the same 

 habitat. In the dry bush of East Africa the unstriped 

 gerenuk is as difficult to make out as the striped lesser 

 koodoo of the same habitat. Considering all these facts, 

 the conclusion seems inevitable that, on the whole, the 

 striped coats confer no advantage and are if anything 

 slowly dying out, although not in consequence of natural 

 selection. The fact probably is that as regards deer and 

 antelope habit, or the combination of habit and cover, is 

 the survival factor of such overwhelming importance that 

 the precise color of the coat is of no consequence one way 

 or the other. This is certainly the case at the present time, 

 and it was probably the case as regards these particular ani- 

 mals since a comparatively remote geologic past. 



The coloration of most groups and genera of African 



