128 Through the Brazilian Wilderness 



the nearly or quite monochrome blacks, reds, and dark 

 grays. The bodily condition of the various beasts was 

 equally good, showing that their success in life, that is, 

 their ability to catch their prey, was unaffected by their 

 several color schemes. Except white, there is no color 

 so conspicuously advertising as black; yet the black jag- 

 uar had been a fine, well-fed, powerful beast. The 

 spotted patterns in the forests, and perhaps even in the 

 marshes which the jaguars so frequently traversed, are 

 probably a shade less conspicuous than the monochrome 

 red and gray, but the puma and jaguarundi are just as 

 hard to see, and evidently find it just as easy to catch 

 prey, as the jaguar and ocelot. The little fawn which we 

 saw was spotted; the grown deer had lost the spots; if 

 the spots do really help to conceal the wearer, it is evi- 

 dent that the deer has found the original concealing 

 coloration of so little value that it has actually been lost 

 in the course of the development of the species. When 

 these big cats and the deer are considered, together with 

 the dogs, tapirs, peccaries, capybaras, and big ant-eaters 

 which live in the same environment, and when we also 

 consider the difference between the young and the adult 

 deer and tapirs (both of which when adult have substi- 

 tuted a complete or partial monochrome for the ances- 

 tral spots and streaks), it is evident that in the present 

 life and in the ancestral development of the big mammals 

 of South America coloration is not and has not been a 

 survival factor; any pattern and any color may accom- 

 pany the persistence and development of the qualities and 

 attributes which are survival factors. Indeed, it seems 

 hard to believe that in their ordinary environments such 



