THE COLORATION OF LARGE ANIMALS: 9 
exception—namely, the observation made several years ago 
that zebras standing on the open veldt in bright moonlight 
are practically invisible at a short distance—must, however, 
be made to this sweeping assertion. And it is scarcely 
too much to say that this important observation—which 
applies also, I believe, to a considerable extent to the 
same animals in daylight—has formed the starting-point 
of modern ideas with regard to the purport and meaning 
of many types of mammalian coloration. 
Before alluding in detail to these ideas and theories, in 
order to show what has been done and what remains to 
be done in this line of research, it may be well to point 
out that, with the aforesaid exception of the zebras, practi- 
cally all our conclusions with regard to the purport of the 
coloration of most of the larger mammals have been drawn 
from the examination of stuffed specimens or skins, sup- 
plemented by observations upon domesticated animals, or 
species living in a semi-domesticated state in parks or 
zoological gardens. With regard’ to foreign species kept 
in parks or menageries, the observations are not, in most 
cases, of any real value, on account of the circumstances 
that the animals are living under changed conditions, and 
not amid their natural surroundings. When skins are once 
deposited in a museum the naturalist has no means what- 
ever of ascertaining by actual experiment how their 
coloration harmonises, or otherwise, with their natural 
environment, all that he can do being to glean as much 
as possible with regard to the latter from the accounts of 
eye-witnesses, and to draw his conclusions accordingly. 
Something might doubtless be done if it were permissible 
to take the skins into the woods and open country and 
test their conspicuousness or invisibility by experiment ; 
but even such experiments cannot, in most cases at any 
