COLORATION OF GAME ANIMALS. 4I 



to admit that I am unable to find any very convincing practical proofs in favour 

 of those theories, so fascinating when read in civilised surroundings. 



The rough copy of this chapter on animal coloration was written about the 

 middle of the year 1907. I had then come to the conclusion that there were few 

 definite proofs that the colours of the larger game were of any service to them for 

 protective purposes. Moreover, that neither could the majority ever hope to gain 

 concealment, by means of their coloration, from their foes, nor did they ever seem 

 to try to conceal themselves. Yet was the colour of many animals assimilated in 

 great measure to their surroundings, but what benefit this was to them or exactly 

 how this had come about it was impossible to imagine. Having arrived at these 

 and several other conclusions, my observations seemed entirely opposed to those 

 of Wallace and other eminent naturalists. I felt that it would be arrogant on my 

 part to insist on opinions so different to those arrived at by distinguished men, but 

 while in the act of revising this chapter a year later I received from England a copy 

 of Selous's " African Nature Notes and Reminiscences," and in it 1 found some of 

 the very conclusions I had arrived at myself, although very much more ably expressed 

 and definitely explained. When I saw that he rejected many of the established 

 theories with regard to animal coloration I no longer felt that it would be 

 presumptuous on my part to do the same and differ with accepted theories. Since 

 such a well-known naturalist and writer had disagreed with the old ideas I felt no 

 hesitation in rewriting the present chapter and expressing more forcibly the views 

 and observations which I had written on but diffidently before. 



To touch first on animals lower in the scale. It is amongst these that the most 

 wonderful likenesses to inanimate and other objects are found. Amongst insects in 

 particular the marvellous resemblances to leaves of different kinds, both dead and 

 green, singly and in bunches of two or three together, sticks, twigs, and other objects 

 are most striking. Everyone must have noticed, even with European caterpillars, 

 butterflies, and moths, what remarkable representations of certain objects many of 

 these show, the rigid attitude of the twig-like caterpillars of some of the geometers 

 standing out at an angle to the branch cannot have been developed by a mere 

 accident, or the wonderful resemblance the undersides of many butterflies bear to the 

 leaves of trees on which they are wont to rest, can hardly be considered as having 

 been brought about by pure chance. Amongst British butterflies the green hairstreak 

 shows, perhaps, one of the most beautiful imitations of a leaf. Nearly all caterpillars 

 bear an extraordinary likeness to parts of the plants on which they feed, and many 

 moths, too, when resting with their wings over tluir backs, are the exact representa- 

 tion of a piece of the bark of those trees on the trunks of which they usually rest. 



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