APPENDICES 421 



each of them is destructive of any principle of colour- 

 protection. 1 



To consider categorically the whole class of mammals is 

 obviously impossible ; hence I will here confine my remarks 

 to a single additional example, and brief at that, since SELOUS 

 has already pointed out its absurdity. I refer to the series of 

 show-cases in the British Museum at South Kensington, 

 designed to illustrate this phantasy of colour-protection 

 white Arctic foxes and ermines in the act of stalking white 

 grouse or white hares. Exquisitely executed as they are, 

 these groups constitute, nevertheless, a monument to colossal 

 ignorance in high places ; conveying, in Selous' words, " an 

 entirely false view of the struggle for life as carried on in the 

 Arctic regions, for they convey the idea of carnivorous animals 

 hunting their prey in a bright light and by eyesight alone." 

 The continuous darkness of an Arctic winter is forgotten or 

 ignored, and the actual habits of the creatures in life distorted 

 to suit the exigencies of a theory. I will only add two 

 supplementary remarks of my own: (i) That creatures in- 

 habiting snowy regions (even temporarily, as grouse at home) 

 do not normally spend their time upon the surface, but beneath 

 it ; and (2) that when actually exposed upon the surface, such 

 creatures even although white are virtually as visible as they 

 would be in any other colour. Whatever object, animate or 

 inanimate, large or small, protrudes above an unbroken contour 

 of snow at once catches the eye be it, say, but the point of a 

 jagged stone or the tips of a tuft of rushes, either enveloped in 

 drifted snow. I recall a remark of a Scottish whaler in Spits- 

 bergen seas. Speaking of polar bears, he described the ice-floes 

 as " black with them " black with white bears ! Though wrong 

 in the letter, the picture is virtually correct and apposite. Prac- 

 tical Peterhead can give points to scientific South Kensington. 2 



1 Grass, by the way, is not always sere ; nor does a burnt veld long 

 remain black. It is turning green " while you wait." But neither lechwi 

 nor cob is ever green. 



2 When attending the unveiling of the Selous Memorial at the British 

 Museum on June loth, 1920, I observed that the labels on these show-cases 

 had been altered from "colour-protection" to "adaptation to environ- 

 ment." This is presumably in deference to the criticisms of our great 

 explorer-naturalist, and is correct so far as it goes. The initial false 

 inference, nevertheless, remains unchanged. 



