134 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



do just as well as their neutral-tinted neighbors; and the 

 same is true of their big kinsfolk. The forest and swamp 

 dwellers of dull and uniform coloration and those of bright 

 and varied coloration get on equally well, and are equally- 

 hard to see or kill; it is evidently the cover and the beasts* 

 shy, wary watchfulness, and not the coloration, that count. 

 Countershading has no effect at all of an appreciable quality 

 as regards these animals. It may very doubtfully be of 

 some slight help in the case of two or three of them; but 

 even in these it is quite impossible that it is a survival factor 

 operating through natural selection for purposes of con- 

 cealment. In a dozen cases, ranging from the buffalo down 

 to the peccary, there is no countershading, and in two cases, 

 at least, the topi and one form of the red fox, there is inverse 

 countershading. 



We have observed and more or less carefully studied 

 hundreds of species of the smaller mammals in both North 

 America and Eastern Africa. We have likewise observed 

 the birds of North America with some care, and among 

 African birds the waders, the birds of prey, the bigger land- 

 birds, and some of the more conspicuous smaller birds, 

 including hornbills, night-hawks, swifts, swallows, sun- 

 birds, bee-eaters, kingfishers, barbets, bulbuls, plantain- 

 eaters, parrots, weaver-birds, and whydah finches. Some 

 facts concerning the revealing and concealing coloration of 

 these species are set forth by Colonel Roosevelt in the 

 Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 

 XXX, pages 119 to 231. 



Thousands of species of birds which are abundant and 

 highly successful in life, such as red-headed woodpeckers, 

 white-headed woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, yellow- 



