130 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



surroundings with which its color harmonizes well-nigh 

 perfectly; and moreover passes much the larger portion of 

 its time — ninety-nine per cent of it — sitting motionless in 

 one position. Some frogs, if their legs are extended, will 

 seem to have five separate blotches of the same color; one 

 on each lower leg, one on each thigh, one across the back. 

 But when in the normal attitude there will appear merely a 

 broad, uninterrupted stripe across the frog's back; it passes 

 so much of its time motionless, with its legs drawn up, that 

 the pigmentation is affected precisely as if these legs were 

 merely lateral developments of the body. Concealing col- 

 oration in such a case may really conceal. Contrast this 

 with the wolf, which ranges over the old and new worlds, 

 and, in its various subspecific forms (using the term 

 "species" with Linnaean largeness), extends over more than 

 half of the land area of the globe, from the polar regions to 

 the tropics. We have studied the wolf carefully in the 

 Rockies and on the great plains; and also its smaller brother, 

 the coyote. A wolf is a wide-ranging animal. It hunts in 

 the white winter, the green spring, the gray fall; on the 

 open plains and in the thick woods; and amid all kinds of 

 surroundings of every conceivable color. Perhaps, on the 

 average, under such conditions a slightly countershaded 

 khaki or drab or gray would be most concealing; and there 

 are wolves of such coloration; but in company with them in 

 different places are white and black and red and brown 

 wolves, and wolves of a conspicuous iron-gray; and all are 

 equally successful. Evidently the coloration is to them, in 

 their varied lives, a factor of no survival value, and there- 

 fore negligible from the standpoint of natural selection; 

 the survival factors are cunning, ferocity, endurance, dash. 



