I 



all that portion of the forest into a shimmering disorder of small, shattered 

 lights and shadows, in which the actual solid details seem inextricably merged. 

 To witness this effect in full, one must of course look at the scene from a 

 point somewhat above it; but the pattern one sees in looking upward through 

 the forest leaves, where they are not so crowded as quite to hide the sky, is 

 of much the same nature. Indeed, this latter sort is in some respects more 

 like that worn by leopards, etc., than is the true sun-fleck pattern. For the 

 predominant effect of the leopard's pattern, and of that made by leaves against 

 the sky, is of symmetrical dark marks on an irregular light ground — propor- 

 tions which the sun-fleck pattern inverts, except where it is exceedingly pro- 

 fuse. But what we see on the hides of these checkered sylvan beasts is really 

 an apt and efficient generalization of this entire class of forest-patterns, includ- 

 ing the much-used picturing of holes, done all in brown and black and golden 

 forest-interior color. 



Among the species named at the beginning of this chapter, all but the 

 giraffe are arboreal— that is, tree-climbing — while the giraffe's great height 

 keeps him also in the region of frequent sun-flecks, as he feeds among low 

 trees and lofty bushes. But the 'checkered' pattern in general is so charac- 

 teristic of all lights and shadows in the woods, that, whether the beast so marked 

 have for a background the variegated middles of trees, an under view of their 

 leafy tops against the sky, or the flat brown forest floor, he will almost al- 

 ways be adequately 'obliterated.' Everywhere, under leajy trees, exist these 

 simple, elemental patterns, whose likeness on the hides of beasts men deem 

 so beautiful. 



A leopard or a jaguar stretched out on a lofty branch, lying in wait for 

 monkeys, his deceitfully counter-shaded and spotted coat dappled into still 

 further indistinctness by the very shadows and sun-spots it counterfeits, 

 must be about the most insidiously inconspicuous of hunters. (See Fig. 87.) 

 But not all leopards and jaguars have this brilliantly obliterative forest-color- 

 ation. Both species are rather prone to melanism, being sometimes almost 

 wholly black, with scant traces either of counter shading or pattern. It would 



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