Protective Colouration. 237 



is of any account. Instead of hunting by scent he hunts 

 by sight long ago with spears and bows and arrows, and 

 now with deadly small bores but it makes no difference 

 to him what the colour of the game is, because it never 

 keeps still for long, as Nature has decreed that all animals 

 must constantly move their bodies, tails, and ears. 

 Certainly an elephant standing motionless in high dark 

 bush, or a zebra in open bush with rays of light pouring 

 through, are both difficult to see at times, but how often 

 does this happen in a hunter's experiences ? 



It is impossible to know why a sable antelope should be 

 coloured black and white, and a kudu a slaty blue ; and I 

 suppose all species have some colouring matter in their 

 skins which cause these noticeable differences. Animals 

 that live mostly in the open, in a country where the rays of 

 the sun are very powerful, get scorched and bleached. 



This is very noticeable in the zebras of British East 

 Africa which inhabit vast open plains. The zebras of 

 Central Africa, Nyasaland, and Northern Rhodesia, which 

 live in a heavily bushed country, have brighter shades of 

 black and whitish-yellow in their striped hides. A photo- 

 graph of any example of protective colouration is no proof 

 at all, as the eye of man does not view objects as the lens 

 of a camera does. Possibly in past ages animals lived in 

 surroundings more like their colouration, but destructive 

 man has changed the face of nature, or driven game out of 

 its natural surroundings, and it has failed to keep pace 

 with the change. 



However, this is almost as fantastical an idea as 

 protective colouration itself, and it will hardly hold good, 

 I am afraid. It is generally assumed that Nature can 

 make no mistakes, so if animals are not coloured to imitate 

 their surroundings, I suppose that Nature did not think it 

 necessary to do so. 



Therefore it is a subject not worth worrying about, as 

 the whole matter rests on no basis, except that animals in 

 their own bodies possess natural proclivities of transmitting 

 their own colours to their descendants. 



