COLORATION 79 



it appears that in both the black and the white species they 

 represent reveaHng rather than conceahng coloration. 



But we must not forget how many men are unable to 

 observe clearly and understandingly, even when their inten- 

 tions are excellent. This is true even of savages whose life 

 is passed in following game, and of white men who make 

 hunting a business. Among savages, whose very lives de- 

 pend upon their knowledge of the game, it is extraordinary 

 to realize the extent to which this real knowledge is mixed 

 up with not only inaccurate personal observation, but in- 

 accurate inherited traditions, and the love of pure magic 

 and mystery. Hunting savages always talk much about 

 the game round the camp-fires; and the wildest legends are 

 mixed with acute and accurate observations, all told with 

 the same implicit belief. Our own Indians always took 

 this attitude toward deer, antelope, moose, elk, but pre- 

 eminently toward the buffalo, bear, cougar, and coyote, 

 animals concerning which the average Indian hunter was 

 wholly unable to divorce actual observation from mythology. 

 The same thing is true in Africa even of such acute observers 

 as the forest-dwelling 'Ndorobo, while the ordinary savage, 

 even of the hunting tribes, will believe utter fables, and even 

 persuade himself that he has witnessed such impossibilities 

 that his statements must be accepted with extreme caution. 

 As for the ordinary white hunter, let any one read what 

 Selous tells of the worthlessness of the views of even 

 experienced Boer hunters as to such elementary points as 

 the number of species of rhinoceros and lion, and the dif- 

 ference in ferocity among these (purely imaginary) species. 

 We ourselves have had precisely the same experience with 

 Rocky Mountain hunters in getting them to tell about 



