APPENDIX E 
511 
if with many animals the matter of coloration is immaterial, so far as 
concealment is concerned, compared with the ability of the animal to 
profit by cover and to crouch motionless or slink stealthily along. 
Again, there seems to be much truth in Mr. Thayer^s statement of 
the concealing quality of most mottled snake skins. But Mr. Thayer 
does not touch on the fact that in exactly the same localities as those where 
these mottled snakes dwell, there are often snakes entirely black or brown 
or green, and yet all seem to get along equally well, to escape equally 
well from their foes, and prey with equal ease on smaller animals. In 
Africa, the two most common poisonous snakes we found were the 
black cobra and the mottled puff* adder. If the coloration of one was 
that best suited for concealment, then the reverse was certainly true of 
the coloration of the other. 
But perhaps the climax of Mr. Thayer’s theory is reached when he 
suddenly applies it to human beings, saying: “Among the aboriginal 
human races, the various war-paints, tattooings, head decorations, and 
appendages, such as the long, erect mane of eagle feathers worn by North 
American Indians—all these, whatever purposes their wearers believe they 
serve, do tend to obliterate them, precisely as similar devices obliterate 
animals.” Now this simply is not so, and it is exceedingly difficult to 
understand how any man trained to proper scientific observation can 
believe it to be so. The Indian, and the savage generally, have a mar¬ 
vellous and wild-beast like knack of concealing themselves. I have seen 
in Africa ’Ndorobo hunters, one clad in a white blanket and one in a red 
one, coming close toward elephants, and yet, thanks to their skill, less 
apt to be observed than I was in dull-colored garments. So I have 
seen an Indian in a rusty frock-coat and a battered derby hat make a 
successful stalk on a deer which a white hunter would have had some 
difficulty in approaching. But when the Ndorobos got to what they—not 
I—considered close quarters, they quietly dropped the red or white 
blankets; and an Indian would take similar pains when it came to mak¬ 
ing what he regarded as a difficult stalk. The feathered hea^d-dress to 
which Mr. Thayer alludes would be almost as conspicuous as a sun 
umbrella, and an Indian would no more take it out on purpose to go 
stalking in than a white hunter would attempt the same feat with an open 
umbrella. The same is true of the paint and tattooing of which Mr. 
Thayer speaks, where they are sufficiently conspicuous to be visible 
from any distance. Not only do the war-bonnets and war-paint of the 
