THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY 63 



grove until we came close. But the most wonderful 

 sight — one of the most wonderful I have ever seen — 

 was that furnished by a huge flock of flamingoes. 

 There must have been thousands upon thousands of 

 them. When we first saw them, they were far in the" 

 distance and flying. We took them for a rosy sunrise 

 cloud. They looked just like that : one of those cotton- 

 wool clouds — the cotton-wool that comes in jewellers' 

 boxes. We did not find out our mistake for some few 

 minutes. Then the cloud miraculously dropped to the 

 edge of the water, and the shore turned pink for miles. 

 This is not an argument for protective coloration. 

 There is a lot more in that theory than its sternest 

 critics seem ready to admit; but much less than its 

 most violent partisans claim. Any feeder on flamingoes 

 (what does feed on flamingoes, by the way?) in our 

 position might, as we did, temporarily mistake them for 

 a pink cloud. But any carnivore or raptore at a closer 

 range could not possibly do so; nor could he long con- 

 tinue to do so even from where we stood. And a 

 carnivore or raptore that did not stir around enough to 

 discover in a very short time what that pink cloud was 

 composed of would deserve to starve. It is inconceiv- 

 able nonsense to believe that several hundred thousand 

 large birds, in an open country, could long remain un- 

 discovered, whatever their coloration. I have seen it 

 stated in support of the extreme theory of protective 

 coloration that flamingoes are night feeders. That 



