APPENDIX E 511 



if with many animals the matter of coloration is immaterial, so far as 

 concealment is concerned, compared with the ability of the animal to 

 profit by cover and to crouch motionless or slink stealthily along. 



Again, there seems to be much truth in Mr. Thayer's statement of 

 the concealing quality of most mottled snake skins. But Mr. Thayer 

 does not touch on the fact that in exactly the same localities as those where 

 these mottled snakes dwell, there are often snakes entirely black or brown 

 or green, and yet all seem to get along equally well, to escape equally 

 well from their foes, and prey with equal ease on smaller animals. In 

 Africa, the two most common poisonous snakes we found were the 

 black cobra and the mottled puff adder. If the coloration of one was 

 that best suited for concealment, then the reverse was certainly true of 

 the coloration of the other. 



But perhaps the climax of Mr. Thayer's theory is reached when he 

 suddenly applies it to human beings, saying: "Among the aboriginal 

 human races, the various war-paints, tattooings, head decorations, and 

 appendages, such as the long, erect mane of eagle feathers worn by North 

 American Indians all these, whatever purposes their wearers believe they 

 serve, do tend to obliterate them, precisely as similar devices obliterate 

 animals." Now this simply is not so, and it is exceedingly difficult to 

 understand how any man trained to proper scientific observation can 

 believe it to be so. The Indian, and the savage generally, have a mar- 

 vellous and wild-beast like knack of concealing themselves. I have seen 

 in Africa 'Ndorobo hunters, one clad in a white blanket and one in a red 

 one, coming close toward elephants, and yet, thanks to their skill, less 

 apt to be observed than I was in dull-colored garments. So I have 

 seen an Indian in a rusty frock-coat and a battered derby hat make a 

 successful stalk on a deer which a white hunter would have had some 

 difficulty in approaching. But when the Ndorobos got to what they not 

 I considered close quarters, they quietly dropped the red or white 

 blankets; and an Indian would take similar pains when it came to mak- 

 ing what he regarded as a difficult stalk. The feathered head-dress to 

 which Mr. Thayer alludes would be almost as conspicuous as a sun 

 umbrella, and an Indian would no more take it out on purpose to go 

 stalking in than a white hunter would attempt the same feat with an open 

 umbrella. The same is true of the paint and tattooing of which Mr. 

 Thayer speaks, where they are sufficiently conspicuous to be visible 

 from any distance. Not only do the war-bonnets and war-paint of the 



