344 THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY 



Mr. Thayer, paradoxically, was wrong though he was right. 

 His own oryx was concealed; but that was not a legitimate 

 argument simply because wild oryxes do not happen to do 

 what stuffed oryxes did. Photographs are equally ex parte. 

 They have relief, no colour, and the relative tones are 

 often false. They are not evidence; for they do not re- 

 produce. 



And here seems a good place for the insertion of another 

 parenthesis of protest against another mistaken line of 

 argument. This merely to clear the decks. 



The proponents of '' concealing coloration" may bring 

 against me an argument they have already used against 

 others. They may say: ^'Yes, you may have seen some 

 thousands of oryx; but what of those you did not see? They 

 remained concealed, and therefore illustrate our point!'' 

 But by a very simple method I tested this. As I moved 

 forward, I was constantly on the lookout to determine how 

 many beasts in the direct line of march escaped my visual 

 attention. If an animal I had not previously seen jumped 

 and ran from in front of us, I naturally concluded it 

 had remained concealed. Then I tried to determine why 

 it had remained concealed. And let no one imagine that 

 African animals to any great extent ** squat" while a safari 

 of forty noisy natives howls by! We saw eventually every- 

 thing in our path. I mention this merely to show that our 

 methods foresaw such obvious objections. 



4. The theory of broken coloration. Mr. Thayer ad- 

 vances the theory that a broken coloration is often more 

 concealing than a uniform coloration. The theory is not 

 original with himself, but the extent of its development is. 



