74 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



The first is that such animals as the wildebeest, topi, 

 hartebeest, and zebra, which have exactly the same habits 

 and drink at exactly the same pools, are so dififerently col- 

 ored that it is possible to maintain the thesis of concealing 

 coloration as to one only by insisting that the others are 

 advertisingly colored; and yet all prosper equally well, and 

 obviously no one of them, as compared to the others, is in 

 any way either helped or harmed by its utterly different 

 coloration, or has altered its life to take advantage of it. 

 When the dark, nearly monocolored, countershaded harte- 

 beests, and the nearly monocolored, inversely counter- 

 shaded topis, and the striped zebras come to water (or 

 feed or rest) together, or in similar places, it is, of course, 

 evident either that the coloration of one advertises it and 

 puts it at a disadvantage as compared with the others, or 

 else, what is undoubtedly the fact, that neither the so-called 

 advertising nor the so-called concealing coloration has any 

 effect one way or the other. 



The second and still more conclusive objection to the 

 theory is that the actual habits of the animals when they 

 come to drink are such as to render it impossible that their 

 coloration can have any, even the slightest, effect in con- 

 cealing them at such times. Motion, unless of an extremely 

 stealthy and skulking type, at once reveals any animal, with- 

 out regard to its coloration. We have seen white-tail, and 

 more rarely black-tail, deer skulk with such stealth as to 

 tend to escape observation; and in Africa it is possible (we 

 say possible, not probable) that some of the cover-loving 

 game — bushbuck, duiker, and dikdik, for instance — may 

 skulk and take advantage of cover, and even perhaps profit 

 by their coloration, as they come to drink; of this we can- 



