PROTECTIVE COLOURING OF ANIMALS. 435 



with the roe deer of the Scriptures. Nature seems 

 also to have endowed these beautiful creatures (whose 

 only protection against their numerous enemies is their 

 fleetness and protective colouring) with the remarkable 

 faculty possessed by the hare and a few other animals, 

 of changing their colouring according to the prevailing 

 tints of the landscape. 



These changes of colour, as in the case of the hare, 

 are of course the work of time ; but Mr. Doughty has 

 noticed that they are mainly white upon the great sand 

 plains, whereas their prevalent tint is a dark grey upon 

 the black " Harra " or lava fields of the volcanic dis- 

 tricts, * where the rock is of a still darker hue, they 

 continue to adapt themselves to its sombre colouring, 

 for he tells us " a startled troop of gazelles scudded 

 before us ; here they " are robust, and nearly of the 

 colour of basalt. " f The fawns are occasionally cap- 

 tured when very young and reared by the nomads 

 but so hardy and fleet are these little creatures that 

 when but a few days old they will outrun the grey- 

 hounds or hunting dogs of the Arabs. These gazelles 

 make beautiful pets, but are very destructive in 

 European houses, tearing and eating hangings and furni- 

 ture of all sorts. Speaking of the beauty of these desert 

 loving animals, Sir Samuel Baker says, 



"A buck gazelle weighs from 60 to 70 Ibs., and is the 

 perfection of muscular development. No person who has 

 seen gazelles in confinement, in a temperate climate, can 

 form an idea of the beauty of the animal in its native deserts. 

 Born in the scorching sun, nursed in the burning sand of the 



* Arabia Deserta, by Chas. M. Doughty, 1882-88, Vol. i., p. 328. 

 t Ibid., Vol. i., p. 395. 



