108 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



bush. As soon as it saw a man at a distance its tendency 

 was to lie down; it treated the recumbent posture as its 

 natural position when threatened; whereas the Tommy 

 always felt that it was at a disadvantage when lying down, 

 was uneasy, and immediately sprang to its feet when it 

 saw what it regarded as a possible, but distant, menace. 

 The steinbok lay down when its foe was at a distance in 

 hopes to escape observation, but kept its head raised watch- 

 fully. If the foe came nearer and it still hoped to escape 

 notice it laid its outstretched neck and head on the ground, 

 and sprang up only when it deemed it hopeless to expect its 

 enemy to pass it unseeing. When it ran it would often stop 

 behind a bush, after going a few hundred yards, and lie 

 down again; and then it might be readily stalked. If under 

 or beside a bush, the shade, or, if the foliage was thin, the 

 checkered play of sunlight and shadow, made it easy for 

 it to escape the eye unless we knew just where to look for 

 it; but so far as, and whenever, its coloration had any effect 

 it was an advertising effect. I am somewhat puzzled how 

 to account for these facts in the compared cases of the stein- 

 bok and klipspringer. The latter has a much more con- 

 cealing coloration than the former, but is noisy and alert, 

 and trusts hardly at all to concealment; whereas the animal 

 that lives under conditions that would seemingly make a 

 concealing coloration helpful, and whose habits also would 

 seemingly make it helpful, has no concealing coloration. 



If we trusted only to such cases as this we would be 

 inclined to agree with those ornithologists who, hke Mr. 

 Outram Bangs, doubt whether concealing coloration is cor- 

 related with the hiding instinct, and are inclined to believe 

 that all animals, no matter what their coloration, alike tend 



