114 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY 



that were new to them, including a tiny woodpecker no 

 bigger than a ruby-crowned kinglet. They had collected 

 two night monkeys — nocturnal monkeys, not as agile 

 as the ordinary monkey ; these two were found at dawn, 

 having stayed out too late. 



The early morning was always lovely on these rivers, 

 and at that hour many birds and beasts were to be seen. 

 One morning we saw a fine marsh buck, holding his 

 head aloft as he stared at us, his red coat vivid against 

 the green marsh. Another of these marsh-deer swam 

 the river ahead of us ; I shot at it as it landed, and 

 ought to have got it, but did not. As always with 

 these marsh-deer — and as with so many other deer — 

 I was struck by the revealing or advertising quality of 

 its red coloration ; there was nothing in its normal 

 surroundings with which this coloration harmonized ; 

 so far as it had any effect whatever it was always a 

 reveahng and not a concealing effect. When the animal 

 fled, the black of the erect tail was an additional reveahng 

 mark, although not of such starthngly advertising quahty 

 as the flag of the whitetail. The whitetail, in one of its 

 forms, and with the ordinary whitetail custom of dis- 

 playing the white flag as it runs, is found in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of the swamp-deer. It has the same foes. 

 E\ddently it is of no survival consequence whether the 

 running deer displays a white or a black flag. Any 

 competent observer of big game must be struck by the 

 fact that in the great majority of the species the colora- 

 tion is not conceahng, and that in ntiny it has a highly 

 reveahng quahty. Moreover, if the spotted or striped 

 young represent the ancestral coloration, and if, as 

 seems probable, the spots and stripes have, on the 

 whole, some shght concealing value, it is evident that 

 in the hfe-history of most of these large mammals, both 



