66 THE BOOK OF NATURE STUDY 



The young of the woodcock, for instance, are broadly striped, 

 like young game-birds such as pheasants ; in some near allies 

 of the woodcock, and in the gulls, the down plumage is mottled, 

 and the mottling shows indisputable evidence of having been 

 derived from the breaking up of stripes ; while, finally, the mottling 

 disappears, leaving a whole-coloured dress as in the skua-gulls. 



Among mammals, the young of the wild boar are striped, 

 the adult is whole-coloured: and the young of many whole- 

 coloured deer are spotted. In some species of the latter, more- 

 over, the spots are ranged in lines, and often run together to 

 form more or less perfect stripes. Foals, it may be remarked, 

 frequently show traces of stripes, suggesting the origin of our 

 whole-coloured horses from striped ancestors. As a rule, this 

 striping is confined to a band along the back and across the 

 shoulders, and bands across the legs ; markings which are retained 

 with some frequency, it may be remarked, in asses throughout 

 life. But in some young horses the hindquarters are also striped. 



But the young of some whole-coloured mammals, it must 

 be remarked, differ from their parent in hue. Thus young 

 foxes are at first of a uniform smoke-grey colour, wherein they 

 rather recall the wolf. After a few weeks, however, the char- 

 acteristic fox-red appears. The young of the common seal, again, 

 is markedly different from the adult in coloration. 



That these colours displayed by the young do really indicate 

 ancestral colours is indirectly supported by one or two facts 

 of another kind. Thus, young elephants at birth are thickly 

 covered with hair, while the adult is for the most part hairless ; 

 and we know that one of the ancestral and now extinct elephants, 

 known as the Mammoth, throughout life was thickly hair-clad ; 

 just as, to turn from external to internal characters, the tempor- 

 arily separate foot bones of the young bird recall the perman- 

 ently separate foot bones of their fossil ancestors (p. 74). 



It may well be, however, that peculiar coloration of the young 

 which has just been described still plays a really useful part, 

 and hence has been preserved. These young animals, in short, 

 retain, or rather pass through other ancestral stages besides 

 those of colour and physical structure. That is to say, they 

 may repeat the habit of evading enemies which obtained in 



