142 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



In camping in various parts of the West I have repeatedly ob- 

 served that at night a gray horse, and even more strikingly a 

 donkey, cannot ordinarily be seen. More than once, when stand- 

 ing guard or going for water, I have actually run into a donkey, 

 utterly unaware of its presence until I came in contact with the 

 body. 



It is highly probable that an owl about to pounce upon a 

 spilogale would be completely baffled by the transformation. 



This Is exceedingly Interesting, from several different 

 standpoints. At my ranch-house on the Little Missouri, 

 the big black and white, unspotted skunks were unpleas- 

 antly common nocturnal visitors. It was always easy to 

 see them, and they never disappeared from sight as the little 

 spotted skunks do. On most nights they were the only 

 animals we could see at all. A badger, for Instance, once 

 came to the ranch-house; we heard It, and thought It a 

 skunk; but we could not see It at all until we got a lantern, 

 as the neutral grayish-drab coloration was Invisible by star- 

 light. It therefore appears that the big skunks have not 

 developed a concealing but, on the contrary, a highly adver- 

 tising coloration at night, and have not developed any way 

 of neutralizing Its advertising character. But the evolu- 

 tion of the little skunks has apparently produced two con- 

 tradictory results: (i) a coloration pattern which Is reveal- 

 ing at night unless the animal Is excited or alarmed; (2) the 

 power of altering the coloration pattern under the Influence 

 of excitement or alarm, so as to neutralize Its advertising 

 character and make the vividly marked animal as incon- 

 spicuous as an ordinary animal, like a badger. Of course, 

 these facts, if the above Interpretation of them Is correct, 

 tend to show that in this case the coloration developed Is, as 



