predaceous, which are almost or quite immune from danger at the hands of 

 their wild fellow-creatures, by virtue either of their great size and strength, 

 or of a potent fixed defensive armament. In the third and last place, a few 

 defenseless arboreal mammals are equipped for mimicry rather than oblit- 

 eration. 



It is, then, among unarmed, daylight-inhabiting mammals, and among 

 the purely rapacious mammals, both of the plains and of the forest, that ob- 

 literative coloration, based on full and simple obliterative shading, reaches 

 its highest and most uniform development. Many of the terrestrial beasts, 

 particularly those of the open country, are equipped with full counter shading 

 and 'ground '-color alone, almost or quite without markings. Such are lions, 

 wolves, jackals, kangaroos, hares and rabbits; marmots, some gophers, and 

 several smaller rodents and marsupials; as well as many of the big ungulates 

 or ruminants, such as wild asses, some wild bovines, and many deer and 

 antelopes. It has long been known that the animals of the desert are ex- 

 tremely alike in coloration — insects, reptiles, birds and mammals all sharing 

 the same sandy brown. But coordinate with this fact is one hitherto ignored, 

 namely, that the colors of these desert animals do as universally and unvary- 

 ingly constitute a perfect obliterative gradation of shades, from dark above 

 to light below. As there is great monotony and uniformity in the animals' 

 lighting and backgrounds, so is there sameness in their color-tints, in their 

 all-essential obliterative shading, and in their scanty pattern, — when patterns 

 occur, for they are often wholly wanting. Among the simply-colored mam- 

 mals named above, the lion and the jackal may fairly be said to belong to the 

 desert class. Most of the others are more characteristically inhabitants of 

 grassy prairies; while some are partially sylvan. The Cottontail Rabbit 

 (Lepus floridanus transitionalis) shown in Plate VII, at the head of this chap- 

 ter, is a fair type of the fully counter-shaded, plain-colored terrestrial mam- 

 mals* These paintings of ours (rabbit, Ruffed Grouse, Copperhead Snake, 



* More strictly, however, this hare is a semi-patterned, semi-sylvan beast, and one in whose 

 normal backgrounds there is a good deal of variation. 



127 



