56 THE GAME OF BRITISH EAST AFRICA. 



versd, almost as often as he has been similarly deceived with a common animal 

 like a hartebeest. 



Presumably the primitive hunter and the beast of prey, if deceived in like 

 manner, would, if very anxious to kill something, have behaved in the same way as 

 the modern sportsman. That is, that instead of assuming that the object in doubt 

 was an ant-hill, they would have made perfectly certain by a closer inspection before 

 moving on elsewhere. It may seem unnecessary to try to pick holes in an old 

 theory without substituting a new one in its place, but this theory of protective 

 coloration, when carried too far, is in certain cases, to quote Mr. Selous, " so fantastic 

 and extravagant as to be unworthy of serious consideration." 



The theory of protective imitation within certain bounds, combined with a study 

 of present climatic influences and past conditions of life and its coloration, opens up 

 a wider, more interesting, and more scientific field of research. Among other 

 points that bear on this subject is the coloration of young animals. The young, 

 amongst game, though by no means wonderfully protectively coloured, are as a 

 rule less obviously coloured than the adults, or else those of both sexes are coloured 

 like the female. A sable is a good illustration of this, for it is only the adults 

 which are black, and only the adult males which are charcoal black, while the 

 young are brown. Yet such colour affords no protection to the young animal, for 

 it is accompanied by its dark-coloured mother and the rest of the herd, amongst 

 which will be at least one adult male that is coal-black in colour. 



Mr. Selous attributes to the influences of environment a great share in the 

 determination of colours of game animals. It is, I believe, a medical fact that 

 anything startling or striking-looking observed by an animal during the process 

 of giving birth is liable to be reflected in some degree in the offspring. The 

 conditions of game life which prevail on the plains of East Africa must be to-day 

 much the same as those which prevailed half a century ago in South Africa. A 

 great part of the rest of Africa, where there is neither bush nor forest nor swamp, 

 is covered with long, rank grass, difficult to walk through and impossible to see 

 through or over. In such parts the grass-eating game have all the advantages 

 of concealment possessed by the bush-dweller. The habits of these animals, too, 

 are more akin to those of the bush-dweller than to those of the plain-dweller. On the 

 plains a very different type is met with, unintelligent, and apparently paying little 

 heed to their self-preservation ; tame, and not easily scared. All game are bad at 

 picking up a stationary object, but these are especially so, however poorly the 

 object may be concealed. 



The sense on which practically all animals most rely, and man least, is the sense 



