1 8 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES CHAP. 



there is no such thing as protective coloration in 

 nature. If an animal is behind a rock or a thick 

 bush, he of course cannot see it, but his eyes are 

 so well trained, he knows so exactly the appearance 

 of every animal to be met with in the country in 

 which he and his ancestors have spent their lives 

 as hunters for countless ages, that he will not miss 

 seeing any living thing that comes within his range 

 of vision no matter what its surroundings may be. 

 Bantu Kafirs are often called savages, and their 

 quickness of sight extolled ; but Kafirs are not real 

 savages, and though there are good hunters amongst 

 them, such men will form but a small percentage of 

 any one tribe. To realise to what a pitch of perfection 

 the human eyesight can be trained, not in seeing 

 immense distances but in picking up an animal 

 within a moderate range immediately it is physically 

 possible to see it, it is necessary to hunt with real 

 savages like the Masarwa Bushmen of South- Western 

 Africa, who depend on their eyesight for a living. 



Now, if carnivorous animals had throughout the 

 ages depended on their eyesight for their daily 

 food as the Bushmen have done, which is what 

 naturalists who believe in the value of protective 

 coloration to large mammals must imagine to be 

 the case, surely their eyesight would have become 

 so perfected that no colour or combination of colours 

 could have concealed any of the animals on which 

 they habitually preyed from their view. As a 

 matter of fact, however, carnivorous animals hunt 

 as a rule by scent and not by sight, and usually 

 at night when herbivorous animals are moving 

 about feeding or goinc^ to drink. At such a time 

 it appears to me that the value of a coloration that 

 assimilated perfectly with an animal's natural sur- 

 roundings during the daytime would be very small 

 as a protection from the attacks of carnivora which 

 hunted by night and by scent. 



