436 



SAVAGE SUDAN 



standards in such cases simply misleads ; while thirdly, the 

 underlying creed that for every visible effect there must exist 

 a cause which is humanly explicable, is untenable. 



A vast percentage of what has been written on this subject 

 had better be regarded as poetic. It reads so prettily, a sort 

 of romance in natural history that appeals to the lay imagina- 

 tion impossible, therefore (the seeds once sown), entirely 

 to eradicate from popular belief. The observations of 

 humble hunters and field -naturalists count for nothing against 



the pretty imaginings of 

 graceful and authoritative 

 , pens. 



Postscript. While busy 

 rewriting this chapter (pro- 

 bably for the twentieth time 

 during twenty years) I 

 read an American treatise 

 on the subject, entitled 

 Concealing Coloration in 

 the Animal Kingdom, by 

 Mr Gerald H. Thayer. In 

 America, we know, they 

 don't do things by halves, 

 and we have grown ac- 

 customed to " big - stick " 

 methods in varied and some- 



" AM I INVISIBLE?" (PURPLE HERON.) times useful developments. 



This book, however, seemed 



to me to top the summit. I must correct the remark that I 

 read it ; for at the sixtieth of its 250 odd pages I gently 

 laid it aside asphyxiated by the magnificent audacity of 

 its assumptions (in prose and colour alike lurid colours, 

 " laid on with a trowel "), and by the nature of what its 

 author is wont to mistake for argument. The ultimate 

 impression left by perusal of those sixty pages was that, 

 beyond the Atlantic, are found men prepared to prove " TO 

 ORDER " any conceivable proposition ; and thereat personally 

 I left it. Subsequently, however, relief came when I read in 



f 



