30 THE INFANCY OF ANIMALS 



As a proof of the marvellous way in which the young 

 tapir harmonises with its surroundings, Dr. Ridley tells 

 us that one day, at high noon, wishing, for safety's sake, 

 to shut up a captive specimen which had the run of his 

 garden in Singapore, he began to hunt about among the 

 bushes, but absolutely failed, for some moments, to see it 

 at all, even when, as he eventually found, he was looking 

 straight down on it ! 



But stranger still, for a season the young tapir wears 

 both the adult and juvenile liveries at the same time, 

 the latter becoming more and more ghostly, and finally 

 disappearing, as the former waxes in intensity ! There 

 is no other animal known to me which exhibits quite so 

 remarkable a change of coloration as this ; the effect is 

 quite uncanny ! And according to Dr. Ridley the piebald 

 garb of the adult, after the last of the spots has vanished, 

 is no less a protective dress — though this seems curious. 

 But Dr. Ridley assures us that when lying down during 

 the day it exactly resembles a grey boulder bathed in 

 sunlight ; and as it often Hves near the rocky streams of 

 the hill-jungles, it is really almost as invisible then as 

 when it was bedecked in stripes and speckles. 



We may take it that the garb of the young pig is, then, 

 similarly a protective garment. As much cannot be 

 said, at any rate with as much feeling of certainty, of 

 the grizzled colour of the adult. But then the wild boar, 

 after he has attained maturity, is not an animal that 

 may be, or is likely to be, attacked light-heartedly by 

 any other denizen of the jungle inclined to predatory 

 expeditions. 



As we have already remarked, adult mammals with 

 a longitudinally striped livery are comparatively rare ; 

 and it is a moot point whether certain of the African 



