5 



hand, like several of those previously mentioned (skunks and badgers), have 

 head- and face-masking as well as body-masking sky-picture patterns. Such 

 markings, indeed, are very common among grubbing carnivorous and in- 

 sectivorous mammals. Anyone who will seek through a big museum col- 

 lection of mammals will be able to add many cases of both sorts to the above 

 casual and fragmentary list. The profusely striped top-pattern of the 

 Spilogale and the Zoril, etc., is merely another form of the same costume, 

 and performs nearly the same service. It pictures sky seen through obstruct- 

 ing twigs or narrow leaves, and is, with little doubt, significant of more sylvan 

 or bush-land-haunting habits on the part of its wearers. It looks somewhat, 

 also, like the converse of such a sky-scene — sharply contrasting linear lights 

 and shadows on the ground, in moonshine. But the light markings, being 

 almost white, are over-bright for this ground-picturing service, whereas they 

 exactly fit the other. True, the effect of such brilliant, sky-lit stripes, con- 

 trasted with the shadowed black of the under parts, is powerfully 'ruptive' 

 in all views, even against the ground, 'breaking the beast up' into un-beast- 

 like stripes and patches. Indeed, against the most brightly moonlit and 

 most sharply shadow-brindled ground, such a beast must be pretty well ob- 

 literated, and even his motion may be masked, — by the motion of the ground- 

 shadows, cast by wind-swayed vegetation. But such conditions are highly 

 occasional, and against open ground the spilogale's mantle of white stripes 

 must often reveal him, especially when he moves about. It would seem that 

 he might be much better equipped for concealment in almost all such views 

 if he were counter shaded and more softly striped — or mottled, or even wholly 

 unmarked. Think how ghostly-illusive against moonlit ground are the ob- 

 literatively shaded and faintly patterned hares, and kindred beasts! Ap- 

 parently, the dominant use of the spilogale's pattern is not ground-picturing, 

 but the matching of sky glimpsed through dusky obstructions — a purpose 

 which the obliteratively shaded, dimly patterned animal's costume could by 

 no means serve. (See Fig. 103.) The spilogale probably has few large 

 enemies to fear, and — just as with skunks, teledus, etc. — it is evidently of most 



150 



