560 APPENDIX E 



often fail to see a man or a horse, at a distance; but this is almost always 

 at such a distance that the coloration pattern cannot be made out at all, the 

 animal seeming neutral tinted, like the rest of the landscape, and escaping 

 observation because it is motionless, just as at the same distance a rhinoc- 

 eros may escape observation. A motionless man, if dressed in neutral- 

 tinted clothes, will in the same manner escape observation, even from 

 wild beasts, at distances so short that no giraffe could possibly avoid 

 being seen. I have often watched game come to watering-places, or 

 graze toward me on a nearly bare plain; on such occasions I might 

 be unable to use cover, and then merely sat motionless on the grass or in 

 a game trail. My neutral-tinted clothes, gray or yellow brown, were 

 all of one color, without any counter-shading; but neither the antelope 

 nor the zebra saw me, and they would frequently pass me, or come down 

 to drink, but thirty or forty yards off, without ever knowing of my presence. 

 My "concealment" or "protection" was due to resting motionless and 

 to wearing a neutral-tinted suit, although there was no counter-shading, 

 and although the color was uniform instead of being broken up with 

 a pattern of various tints. 



The zebra offers another marked example of the complete break-down 

 of the protective coloration theory. Mr. Thayer says: "Among all the 

 bolder obliterative patterns worn by mammals, that of the zebra probably 

 bears away the palm for potency." The zebra's coloration has proved 

 especially attractive to many disciples of this school, even to some who 

 are usually good observers; but, as a matter of fact, the zebra's coloration 

 is the reverse of protective, and it is really extraordinary how any fairly 

 good observer of accurate mind can consider it so. One argument used 

 by Mr. Thayer is really funny, when taken in connection with an argu- 

 ment frequently used by other disciples of the protective coloration theory 

 as applied to zebras. Mr. Thayer shows by ingenious pictures that a wild 

 ass is much less protectively colored than a zebra; some of his fellow- 

 disciples triumphantly point out that at a little distance the zebra's stripes 

 merge into one another and that the animal then becomes protectively 

 colored because it looks exactly like a wild ass! Of course each author 

 forgets that zebras and wild asses live under substantially the same con- 

 ditions, and that this mere fact totally upsets the theory that each is 

 beneficially affected by its protective coloration. The two animals can- 

 not both be protectively colored; they cannot each owe to its coloration 

 an advantage in escaping from its foes. It is absolutely impossible, if one 

 of them is so colored as to enable it to escape the observations of its foes, 

 that the other can be. As a matter of fact, neither is, and neither makes 

 any attempt to elude observation by its foes, but trusts entirely to vigilance 

 in discerning them and fleetness in escaping from them; although the 

 wild ass, unlike the zebra, really is so colored that because thereof it 

 may occasionally escape observation from dull-sighted foes. 



Mr. Thayer's argument is based throughout on a complete failure 

 to understand the conditions of zebra life. He makes an elaborate 

 statement to show that the brilliant cross bands of the zebra have great 



