80 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



grizzly bears and cougars; good, competent men would tell 

 us about cougars eleven feet long, and about the wide dif- 

 ference in behavior and ferocity between "blue" and *'red" 

 cougars (merely slight color phases of the same species, as 

 with red and gray screech-owls) and the similar differences 

 between ** bald-face," "roach-back," and "silver-tip" griz- 

 zlies — all of them the same animals. In a really good book 

 on the tracks of American game, by a veteran professional 

 hunter, there is an account of a purely mythical animal, the 

 "fan-tail deer," of Montana and other parts of the West; 

 and again and again old hunters insist upon the existence of 

 the "ibex" which they have themselves seen and even 

 killed; yet the smallest scientific inquiry at once and in- 

 variably proves the fan-tail to be nothing but some small 

 white-tail, and the ibex to be a young mountain ram. 



We need not wonder that unread men with untrained 

 minds take such positions; for educated men, good observers, 

 frequently record observations as diametrically opposed to 

 one another, and draw from one set or the other false con- 

 clusions. We are not in the least blaming these men; 

 doubtless we would do just the same ourselves if we had 

 not been put on our guard. We are all of us feeling our 

 way and must profit by both the discoveries and the mis- 

 takes of others. Too often the open-air naturalist, the 

 out-of-doors observer, backs up his erring closet brother 

 by observations which really represent nothing but the 

 tendency to see what the man has been told to look for. 

 The hunters and explorers unconsciously make observa- 

 tions in accord with what they have been taught to expect 

 to find in such a matter as concealing coloration. At one 

 time they are told that a general uniform tint is concealing. 



