504 
APPENDIX E 
occasions. There have been occasions when I have seen antelopes quicker 
than I have seen the zebra with which they happened to be associated. 
More often, the light has been such that I have seen the zebra first. Where 
I was, in Africa, the zebra herds were on the same ground, and often 
associated with, eland, oryx, wildebeest, topi, hartebeest, Grant’s ga¬ 
zelle and Thomson’s gazelle. Of all these animals, the wildebeest, be¬ 
cause of its dark coloration, was the most conspicuous and most readily 
seen. The topi also usually looked very dark. Both of these animals 
were ordinarily made out at longer distances than the others. The ga¬ 
zelles, partly from their small size and partly from their sandy coloration, 
were, I should say, usually a little harder to make out than the others. 
The remaining animals were conspicuous or not, largely as the light 
happened to strike them. Ordinarily, if zebras were mixed with elands 
or oryx I saw the zebras before seeing the eland and oryx, alth«Aigh I 
ought to add that my black companions on these occasions usually made 
out both sets of animals at the same time. But in mixed herds of harte- 
beests and zebras, I have sometimes seen the hartebeests first and some¬ 
times the zebras.* 
The truth is that this plains game never seeks to escape observation 
at all, and that the coloration patterns of the various animals are not 
concealing and are of practically no use whatever in protecting the ani¬ 
mals from their foes. The beasts above enumerated are colored in widely 
different fashions. If any one of them was really obliteratively colored, 
it would mean that some or all of the others were not so colored. But, 
as a matter of fact, they are none of them instances of concealing colora¬ 
tion; none of the beasts seek to escape observation, or trust for safety 
to eluding the sight of their foes. When they lie down they almost always 
lie down in very open ground, where they are readily seen, and where they 
can hope to see their foes. When topi, roan antelope, hartebeest, and 
so forth, are standing head-on, the under parts look darker instead of 
lighter than the upper parts, so that in this common position there is no 
“counter-shading.” The roan and oryx have nearly uniform colored coats 
which often do harmonize with their surroundings; but their bold face 
* Mr. Thayer tries to show that the cross stripes on the legs of zebras are of pro¬ 
tective value; he has forgotten that in the typical Burchell’s zebra the legs are white; 
whether they are striped or not is evidently of no consequence from the protective stand¬ 
point. There is even less basis for Mr. Thayer’s theory that the stripings on the 
legs of elands and one or two other antelopes have any, even the slightest, protective 
value. 
