Some Instances of Colour-Protection in Mammals 203 
travellers, that most of them are forest-dwelling creatures—these animals are doubtless 
extremely inconspicuous, their white stripes on a rufous ground harmonizing with the 
vertical streaks of light and shade im an African scrub-jungle. <A practical demon- 
stration of this is afforded by the case of the elands. One of these animals inhabits 
the forests of the Gambia, and retains the typical rufous ground-colour with the 
conspicuous white stripes. Onthe other hand, in the striped eland of South-Central 
Africa, which inhabits more open country, the ground-colour has faded to pale fawn ; 
while in its cousin of Cape Colony, which is found on the open plains, the stripes 
have also gone. It should be noticed that, although all the forest-haunting members 
of this group have a white gorget on the throat, yet none of them have white 
under-parts—an indication that they are not accustomed to graze by daylight in the 
open. In a few species of bushbuck the males have discarded the brilliant livery of 
their partners for a brown coat of long and shaggy hair very similar to that of 
the sambar among the deer. If 
inference from analogy be of any 
value, these animals ought to have 
taken to a nocturnal existence, and 
to pass the daylight hours in the 
most obscure recesses of the forest. 
Grévy’s zebra, which is a forest- 
haunting species differmg from its 
kindred by the narrowness of its 
stripes and the enormous size of 
its ears, apparently possesses a 
type of coloration adapted for con- 
cealient amid thin forest, and the 
same is certamly the case with 
the Somal giraffe, which has a 
colourng—a coarse white network 
on a liver-coloured ground—widely 
different from that of the ordimary 
eiwaffe. The photographs taken 
during Lord Delamere’s expedition 
to Hast Africa, one of which is 
: here reproduced, demonstrate the 
astea Te een ae Si extraordinary adaptation in colour 
Salas Wee Ta seas Roe ate and markings of the Somali giraffe 
to its surroundings; it is no easy 
matter in the illustration, for example, to determine how many giraffes are present. 
On the other hand, the ordinary giraffe, with its chocolate blotches on a buff 
ground, displays a type of colouring adapted to harmonize with the broken shade thrown 
by the tall mimosas among which these animals are found. The broad striping of 
the typical zebras and quaggas, conspicuous as it appears at close quarters, fades into 
an inconspicuous blurr on the open veldt. This type of colouring produces, indeed, 
comparative invisibility on a plan totally different from that obtaining in the case 
‘of dark-backed and white-bellied animals, the result in this case being to break up the 
outline of the body by the alternating black and white bars. A similar type obtains 
in the case of the tiger. It is generally stated, indeed, that the orange and black 
stripes of the latter animal are intended to harmonize with the tall blades of dried 
grass in an Indian jungle and the dark spaces between them; but it is probable 
that their main effect is to break up the general outline of the animal. To a large 
