VALUE OF A DAPPLED COAT 
nizes beneficially with the splashes of sunlight and shade beneath forest 
trees in summer. Lydekker® points out a supporting fact in the circum- 
stance that spotted deer become self-colored in winter, when there are 
no leaves to cast checkered shadows. ‘Accordingly, the fallow deer ex- 
changes its dappled summer livery for a uniform coat of fawn, more in 
harmony with the somber color prevalent in nature generally during the 
northern winter. A precisely similar change takes place in the Japanese 
deer and its relative, the Peking deer of Manchuria, both of which have 
bright chestnut coats dappled with large white spots in summer, while in 
winter they are clothed in somber brown.” The Indian axis, which spends 
its life in herds on the margins of rippling streams with their banks over- 
grown by lofty trees, or in the grassy glades that open out amid the 
exquisite foliage of bamboo clumps, does not make any such seasonal 
exchange of coat, nor does the Philippine axis, but both retain the dappled 
livery throughout the year; this, Dr. Lydekker says, is because they dwell 
in the tropics, where the trees do not become bare. But the East Indian 
hog deer does not conform to this alleged rule. 
It would at once occur to sportsmen that the sambar was neither spotted 
nor changeable; but Dr. Lydekker explains that that species dwells mainly 
in thick woods, is chiefly nocturnal, and does not need a dappled hide for 
concealment. Nor has it escaped the same competent naturalist that many 
deer, as well as most other hairy animals of northern countries, semiannually 
put on a winter coat paler than their summer dress; and he regards this as 
in the same category, — that is, as a protective arrangement. But various 
larger influences seem to me to induce this tendency in almost all animals, 
especially ruminants, to whiten in cold climates. Why, for instance, are 
the roe and red deer of the Old World, and our whitetail (cases particu- 
larly referred to), wearing in summer uniform red coats when their haunts 
and habits are practically the same as are said to make a white-spotted 
dress so advantageous for the fallow deer and the chital? Our common 
deer dwells in the edges of the woods, in open glades and along brushy 
river margins, as well as in denser forest, yet is not spotted, though its 
fawns are, as is the case with the young of most uniformly colored animals; 
it has long been believed that this last fact indicates that primitively all 
these animals were spotted, and that most species have outgrown the 
condition; but why should they do so if it were so advantageous? It is 
apparent that more study is required in this direction. 
The most irregular of the deer, and one which some natu- 
ralists would place in a separate family nearer the Bovide 
303 
