98 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



very, very few animals are seen in simple surroundings. 

 The ordinary man thinks of a zebra or a tanager or a tiger 

 or a bird of paradise as he sees it in a museum or as he 

 sees its picture in a book, when it jumps to the eye; and 

 when in nature it does not jump to the eye he immediately 

 ascribes the concealment to the animal instead of to the 

 landscape. There are in nature landscapes so flat and 

 uniform that every living thing on them is thrown into 

 relief; and others, not quite so uniform, but where anything 

 conspicuous is easily seen. All the mammals and birds in 

 the first type of landscape, and most of those in the second, 

 are readily seen. Antelope on the bare, flat plains, and 

 smaller animals on these plains if the grass is very short, 

 sea-birds on or over the ocean, orioles and blackbirds and 

 robins on lawns, loons and ducks on lakes or wide rivers, 

 cormorants, auks, puffins, guillemots on cliffs and rocky 

 islands, herons and pelicans and ibis along beaches and 

 bare shores — all show as distinctly as they would under like 

 conditions of light and distance in a museum. If in these 

 places any birds are concealed as young gulls and stilts 

 or some grouse and night-hawks are concealed, the conceal- 

 ment is due to coloration and not to the landscape. 



But most landscapes are not of this simple character. 

 Animals of all colors and patterns that live in grass below 

 the level of the tops, or in forests, or even in bare country 

 which is much broken and accidented, become extremely 

 difficult to see. The inexperienced or unthinking man has 

 no idea of the extreme complexity of the average landscape. 

 The myriad of varying lights and shadows, the countless 

 gradations of color, the innumerable twigs and leaves, the 

 hummocks and irregularities and infinitely varied details 



