ASSIMILATIVE COLOURATION. 461 
Dr. Hans Meyer remarks that “‘ every observer must be struck 
with the general similarity in colour and partly aiso in form of 
the larger African mammals to the prevailing colours and features 
of the regions they frequent. At a distance it is scarcely possible 
to tell a Hartebeest at rest from one of the reddish ant-heaps 
which everywhere abound; the long-legged, long-necked Giraffe 
might easily pass for a dead mimosa, the Rhinoceros for a fallen 
trunk, the grey-brown Zebra for a clump of grass or thorn scrub. 
It is only their movements that betray their real character.” * 
The Lichtenstein Hartebeest (Bubalis lichtensteini) is also of 
a more or less uniform colour, “saffron, with a golden tinge 
throughout’’; while the more common Hartebeest (Bubalis 
caama), which has a wider distribution, is also in general colour 
of a ‘reddish brown, with violet tinge throughout”; and Messrs. 
Nicolls and Eglington, who have been quoted as to the colour of 
both these animals, describing the habits of the last, write :— 
“The Hartebeest is never met with in very thick bush, or hilly 
country, but frequents either the bare open flats or plains sparsely 
covered with camel-thorn trees (Acacia giraffe), and where there 
are treeless glades to be met with.” f 
It may have possibly struck the reader by this time that the 
surmise of the writer is that, in tne first instance, and in the 
long past, animals were uniformly and assimilatively coloured 
in connection with their principal surroundings, and that as 
they migrated through scarcity of food owing to excessive 
multiplication or other causes, or through the alteration of 
climatic condition, their changed environment placed them 
under altogether different conditions, and the modifying in- 
fluence of natural selection then became a magician’s wand in 
the evolution of diverse colours and markings, but it was not the 
sole agency. The tendency to explain all problems by the theory 
of natural selection is to-day greatly retarding the study of 
bionomics. It is not one whit removed from the proferred 
explanation of the old teleologists, and represents as little 
** “Across Hast African Glaciers,’ p.79.—Other travellers in South Africa 
have noticed an absence of game among ant-hills. Thus Andrew Steedman 
states: ‘‘We remarked that, where they most abounded, Antelopes and 
other species of gregarious animals were seldom to be met with” (‘ Wand, 
and Advent. in Int. 8. Africa,’ vol. i. p. 172). 
+ ‘The Sportsman in South Africa,’ p. 46, 
