COLORATION 123 



blackish color. The variety of habitats among the Ameri- 

 can tapirs is wider than is the difference in character of 

 environment between one or two of the species and the 

 Malayan tapir. All have foes of the same kind, the big 

 cats; the tiger and leopard in Malaysia, the jaguar and puma 

 in America. The coloration of the Malayan tapir can only 

 be called concealing if the coloration of the American tapir 

 is admitted to be revealing. As a matter of fact, we do 

 not for a moment believe that the coloration of the former 

 is really as concealing as the coloration of the latter; the 

 observers who so read it really only mean that in their sur- 

 prise at finding that almost all animals, of all colorations, 

 are inconspicuous in forest and jungle they attribute to the 

 animal's coat an invisibility that is really due to the land- 

 scape. The observer whom Mr. Pycraft quotes states that 

 the Malayan tapir, when lying down in the daytime, re- 

 sembles a gray bowlder bathed in sunlight, the implication 

 being that natural selection has picked out its coloration so 

 as to resemble bowlders in the sun. Well, in Africa we 

 have seen rhinoceros when lying down in the sun mistaken 

 for ant-hills; and there is no question whatever that an 

 American tapir would, under similar circumstances, be mis- 

 taken for a darker-colored bowlder. The facts in the case of 

 the tapirs do not prove that one coloration pattern is more 

 effective than another as a concealer of survival value under 

 the play of natural selection. They prove the exact re- 

 verse. The facts quoted by Mr. Pycraft, if the interpre- 

 tation of the natural-selectionists were correct, would show 

 (i) that tapirs were formerly concealingly colored; (2) that, 

 without as far as is known change of environment, one of 

 them has developed a totally different type of concealing 



