552 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



He had been watching us all the time, and would not have moved 

 had we kept to the road. The wonderful part of this is, not that 

 he resembled the round stones and dry grass, but that he knew 

 he did, and was ready to profit by it."* According to Living- 

 stone's observations on a small Antelope named " Tianvane " : — 

 " When the young one is too tender to run about without the 

 dam, she puts one foot on the prominence about the seventh 

 cervical vertebra, or withers ; the instinct of the young enables 

 it to understand that it is now required to kneel down, and to 

 remain quite still till it hears the bleating of its dam, If you see 

 an otherwise gregarious she-Antelope separated from the herd, 

 and going along anywhere, you may be sure she has laid her 

 little one to sleep in some cosy spot. The colour of the hair in 

 the young is better adapted for assimilating it with the ground 

 than that of the older animals, which do not need to be screened 

 from the observation of birds of prey." t " Rabbits open their 

 nesting burrows and suckle their young by night, closing them 

 lightly with earth again when they leave them. I had a nest 

 under close observation last spring, and was much interested to 

 find that its owner scattered some old hay from a Sheep foddering- 

 station close by, over the mould with which she filled the 

 entrance to the burrow every time she left it, a procedure which 

 materially lessened its chances of being discovered." \ We can 

 find another example in the East. In the South Mahratta 

 country, according to Sir W. Elliot, it is a common belief of 

 the peasants that in the open plains, where there is no cover or 

 concealment, the Indian Wolves (Canis pallipes) scrape a hole in 

 the earth, in which one of the pack lies down and remains hidden 

 while the others drive the herd of Antelopes over him.§ The 

 usual colour of these animals is a greyish fulvous, generally with 

 a brownish tinge, so that active or aggressive mimicry is thus 

 obtained. A similar explanation may be applied to the fact 

 described by Capt. Scannon respecting the Californian Sea-lion 

 (Otaria gillespii). This animal, when in pursuit of a Gull, 

 "dives deeply under water, and swims some distance from where 



* ' Wild Animals I have Known,' p. 193. 

 j ' Mission. Travels and Kesearches in S. Africa,' p. 209. 

 I Bichd. Kearton, ' With Nature and a Camera,' p. 180, 

 § Gf. Lydekker, 'Roy. Nat, Hist.' vol. i. p. 500. 



