180 ANIMAL LIFE 



animals to the snow and ice may not prove to be one 

 of sympathetic colouration, but to be a part of that 

 more embracing harmony between animals and their 

 surroundings of which the cryptic colour resemblance 

 is a subsidiary and often a negligible factor. The 

 Arctic raven, which is black all the year round, is as 

 sufficiently adapted to its mode of life as the fox 

 or bear, that more habitually live amongst the snow 

 and are so well screened from observation by their 

 white colour. 



With the desert it is otherwise. The prevalence 

 of tawny colouring among its beasts and birds, reptiles 

 and insects is a parallel to the speckling of sand- 

 dwelling fish in shallow seas. The lion, no less than 

 the sand-grouse or sand-fly, bears the Ishmaelitish 

 mark — a dun colour, relieved, if at all, by a speckling 

 or shading that melts into the body colour. 



Enforced stillness during the heat of the day has 

 given ample opportunity for the working of the soil 

 upon the eyes and skin of desert creatures. The 

 dominant pigment, yellow, of such hoary antiquity 

 and unexpected usefulness, has received a new impetus 

 to its development from the match which it affords 

 to the tone of the ground. 



In the forest and field, animal colouration is largely 

 ' pictures of shadow under foliage, with delicate 

 patterns of vegetation and flowers drawn across it.' ' 

 The partridge, grouse, woodcock, thrush, and snipe 

 show this. Still more strikingly does it appear in 



1 Thayer. 



