COLOURS AND COLORATION 33 



any rate, and possibly in all, they have been formed by 

 the breaking up of stripes ; and while in some cases 

 these disintegrated stripes were transverse, in others, and 

 perhaps more frequently, they were longitudinal. 



The paca (Caelogenys paca), the spotted and striped 

 hyaenas, the curious little Indian chevrotain (Tragulus 

 meminna) and the handsome harnessed antelope will serve 

 to show transitional stages in the passage from stripes 

 to spots. But I can call to mind no instances where the 

 adult is spotted and the young are striped. Yet we should 

 expect to- find such cases. But we do find a number of 

 instances where the adults are self-coloured and the young 

 are spotted, or display both stripes and spots, that is to say 

 stripes in process of conversion into spots. Young deer 

 of many species show this to perfection. In the young 

 of the hog-deer {Cervus porcinus), axis-deer (C. axis), red- 

 deer (C. elaphus) and fallow-deer (C. dama), for instance, 

 the spots, though sharply defined, are seen to be ranged 

 in longitudinal lines, and these are much more sharply 

 defined in the young than in the adult. In some deer, 

 as in the case of the red-deer and musk-deer, the spots 

 vanish with adolescence, in others, as in the axis-deer, they 

 are retained throughout life. In some cases, however, as in 

 the fallow-deer, the hide of the adult is alternately spotted 

 and self-coloured. And these changes appear to play an 

 important role in the animal's well-being. 



The fallow-deer, it must be remembered, is a forest- 

 haunting species, and during the summer months ruminates, 

 for choice, in sunny glades, lying amid the undergrowth 

 and bracken, where the play of the sunlight through the 

 foliage scatters spots and shafts of golden light on 

 every side. Thus the spotted hides of the deer blend 

 insensibly with their surroundings, and, so long as they 



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