510 APPENDIX E 



motionless, looking at the hunter, out it never tries to hide from 

 him. It is one of the most conspicuous animals in Nature. Native 

 hunters of the true hunting tribes pick it up invariably at an 

 astonishing distance, and near by it never escapes their eyes ; its 

 coloration is of not the slightest use to it from the standpoint of 

 concealment. Of course, white men, even though good ordinary 

 hunters, and black men of the non-hunting tribes, often fail to see 

 it, just as they often fail to see a man or a horse, at a distance ; 

 but this is almost always at such a distance that the coloration 

 pattern cannot be made out at all, the animal seeming neutral 

 tinted, like the rest of the landscape, and escaping observation 

 because it is motionless, just as at the same distance a rhinoceros 

 may escape observation. A motionless man, if dressed in neutral- 

 tinted clothes, will in the same manner escape observation, even 

 from wild beasts, at distances so short that no giraffe could possibly 

 avoid beinjr seen. I have often watched ii;ame come to watering;- 

 places, or graze toward me on a nearly bare plain ; on such occasions 

 I might be unable to use cover, and then merely sat motionless on 

 the grass or in a game trail. My neutral-tinted clothes, grey or 

 yellow-brown, were all of one colour, without any covnter-sliadmg ; 

 but neither the antelope nor the zebra saw me, and they would 

 frequently pass me, or come down to drink, but thirty or forty 

 yards off, without ever knowing of my presence. My " conceal- 

 ment "" or " protection "'*' was due to resting motionless and to 

 wearing a neutral-tinted suit, although there was no counter- 

 shading, and although the colour was uniform instead of being 

 broken up with a pattern of various tints. 



The zebra offers another marked exam[)le of the complete break- 

 down of the protective coloration theory. Mr. Thayer says : 

 " Among all the bolder obliterative patterns worn by mammals, 

 that of the zebra probably bears away the palm for potency." 

 The zebra's coloration has proved especially attractive to many 

 disciples of this school, even to some who are usually good ob- 

 servers ; but as a matter of fact, the zebra's coloration is the 

 reverse of protective, and it is really extraordinary how any fairly 

 good observer of accurate mind can consider it so. One argument 

 used by Mr. Thayer is really funny, when taken in connection with 

 an argument frequently used by other disciples of the protective 

 coloration theory as applied to zebras. Mr. Thayer shows by in- 

 genious pictures that a wild ass is much less protectively coloured 

 than a zebra. Some of his fellow-disciples triumphantly point out 

 that at a little distance the zebra's stripes merge into one another, 

 and that the animal then becomes protectively coloured because it 

 looks exactly like a wild ass ! Of course, each author forgets that 

 zebras and wild asses live under substantially the same conditions, 

 and that this mere fact totally upsets the theory that each is 



