upon the sandy or otherwise pale-colored ground in sun- or moon-light, make 

 a pattern very much like the zebra's * So also with the reflections of such 

 plants on quiet water. Scenes like these are doubtless typical of all the coun- 

 try in which zebras live. For however arid and barren, through much of the 

 year, are the hills and plains and plateaux over which the Mountain Zebra 

 ranges, or used to range, they are yet clothed with tall plants of many sorts, 

 including rank grasses, which no doubt stand erect for months after they are 

 withered by drought. Furthermore, all beasts must have water, and so the 

 zebras of the dry plains must needs make frequent visits to the nearest living 

 sloughs and rivers. There, by the water's edge, tall reeds and grasses almost 

 always nourish — often in broad beds of marshy verdure — and there, where 

 all beasts meet to drink, is the great place of danger for the ruminants, and 

 all on whom the lion preys. In the open land, they can often detect their 

 enemy afar off, and depend on their fleetness for escape; but when they are 

 down in the river bed, among the reeds, he may approach unseen and leap 

 among them without any warning. It is probably at these drinking-places 

 that the zebra's pattern is most beneficently potent. From far or near, the 

 watching eye of the hunter f (bestial or human) is likely to see nothing, or 

 nothing but reed-stripes, where it might otherwise detect the contour of a 

 zebra. The extraordinary brilliancy of these stripes, which for the most part 

 are clear black and white in sharpest contrast (much dimmed, of course, by 

 shadows, when the beast stands amidst vegetation), makes them effectively 

 obliterative at a great distance, where weaker markings would merge and 

 vanish, thereby allowing their wearer's contour to become apparent. Nor is 

 this brilliance detrimental to the effect in a near view,— the stripes, as Schill- 



* One may satisfy oneself of this even in the snowy winter woods of northern Europe or America, 

 where, in the slanting light of sun or moon, the shadows of naked trees lie thickly scattered on the 

 pure-white ground. Those of the trunks are mostly parallel, and perspective gathers them into nar- 

 rowly banded patterns, while those of the branches, though much more irregular, also tend to form 

 patterns of this type. 



t However largely lions and other rapacious mammals hunt by scent, it is not scent, but sight 

 alone, that can serve them when they are down wind of their quarry; and sight alone must guide their 

 ultimate killing dash and spring.— A. H. T. 



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