MELANISM IN FELIS SERVAL 
109 
When sleeping at night, they turn chalk white or pale 
sulphur yellow, the head uppermost and the tail curled up 
like an ammonite — never over the back, the flexor muscles 
being on the underside — or else the tip hooked around some 
convenient projection. 
After death they are white, and in one instance when a 
chameleon crawled on to the floor and was stepped upon, its 
head, the injured part, turned quite black and the remainder 
of its body white. The congealed blood was obviously the 
reason of the blackness. This seems to prove that the colours 
are caused by suffusion of blood in the pigment cells in the 
living reptile. 
MELANISM IN EELIS SERVAL 
By C. W. Hobley. 
It has been well known for some years that in Kikuyu 
country specimens of black servals have been obtained. 
As the country becomes more occupied the frequency 
with which these abnormal specimens are killed is extremely 
striking, and in a recent tour through some of the farms in the 
Limoru area I observed several skins at nearly every farm house. 
Since my attention was first directed to this peculiarity, 
I must have seen upwards of twenty skins. 
No explanation has, I believe, been offered of this extra- 
ordinary recurrence of melanism, and I would therefore suggest 
that the Society should endeavour to secure through its mem- 
bers a series of skulls from black servals and carefully compare 
these with the ordinary variety in case there should be some 
anatomical divergence which has escaped notice ; measurements 
of the two types might also prove of interest. The skins do 
not appear to be all of equal blackness, and range from a rich 
dark brown to almost jet-black ; in some skins traces of spots 
can be distinguished, but this becomes more difficult the blacker 
the specimen. 
Mr. Percival informs me that the genet in the same locality 
also exhibits melanism and that black servals have been found 
on Kilimanjaro and on Mau. Mr. Heatley also obtained a 
