128 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



After a few months the young tapir loses its stripes 

 and assumes a marbled mottled coat, which later 

 becomes covered with irregular spots of black and 

 white. Gradually some of the black spots turn 

 white, and some of the white spots turn black, 

 until eventually the adult animal assumes the fan- 

 tastic particoloured coat which I have described, and 

 which can best be imagined by picturing to oneself a 

 gigantic black pig with a white sheet pinned round its 

 body. Yet the extraordinary thing is that, despite 

 this weird marking and strong contrast of colour, the 

 tapir in its native haunts is not a conspicuous animal. 

 In the heavy forest which it inhabits, where the 

 chequered light and shade fall irregularly, it seems as 

 though the shade darkened the whiteness of the skin, 

 while the light mitigated its blackness, and when the 

 animal is alarmed and seeks safety in flight, black and 

 white melt into one another to form a strangely 

 invisible grey the grey of a fleeting mist. It takes 

 the two strong colours to produce this effect, for if the 

 animal were really the grey that it appears to be, it 

 would, in its surroundings, be almost as conspicuous 

 as if it were white. 



I was stationed at Ipoh, the principal town of a 

 large tin-mining district in the state of Perak, when 

 my attention was first drawn to shooting a tapir. It 

 was a miserable place for sport, for almost all the big 

 game had been driven out of the district by the wood- 

 cutters and charcoal-burners, who ransacked the forest 

 to supply the tin-miners. A sladang or two, it is true, 

 remained in a secluded corner; there were a few 

 rhinoceroses within reasonable distance ; and tigers, 



