418 SAVAGE SUDAN 



They cannot all be "colour-protected." Big objects on open 

 ground can never be concealed by colour. Whether your 

 zebras be striped ^or unstriped, whether the objects be red 

 impala or blue gnus, white oryx or black buffaloes there 

 they stand distinct to be seen up to the limits of human 

 vision. 1 



None need go to Africa to learn these elementary truths. 

 Watch the sheep on a Northumbrian moor, or on " Hampstead 

 Heath," or on open downlands anywhere else. It is a breezy 

 day, with clouds continuously coursing across the sky. During 

 alternate periods of sunlight, the brown bosom of the moor is 

 everywhere flecked with snow-white flocks ; now a passing cloud 

 shuts off the sunshine and the landscape is fleckless, unbroken 

 umber-brown. But the sheep are all there still. A moment 

 before, in the river far below, had stood a heron, showing white 

 by contrast with dancing blue waters. Look now and you see 

 nothing. Has that heron gone ? No ; the binoculars reveal 

 him still standing statuesque ; but the passing shadow has 

 momentarily blended bird and stream into a common mono- 

 chrome. Stated so, in terms of fell or veld, the matter appears 

 to resolve itself into a mere truism. But when truth has been 

 dethroned distorted and perverted to prop up some nebulous 

 hypothesis it becomes necessary to restate elementary facts 

 in terms no less forceful than were truth itself the paradox. 



Naturally in forest or among bush, animals are less easily 

 detected than on open veld. That is simply because they are 

 then partly concealed from sight sometimes entirely ! Any 

 protective contention arising therefrom rests on a double 

 confusion, which may be crystallised thus : 



(1) That the eye can distinguish colour or detail at a 



distance as clearly as when close at hand as who 

 would sing : 



No distance lends enchantment to my view 

 Nor paints my distant zebras blue. 



(2) That the eye can distinguish with equal facility things 



1 I feel tempted to ask, against what danger are these creatures pre- 

 sumed to be protected at 500 yards ? Again the theorists would be 

 constrained to evoke either their pet "Lion-Rampant" ex Heraldry 

 (NEC Leo Africanus) or cordite ; both items barred by axiom ! But both 

 points have already been mentioned. 



