510 
APPENDIX E 
motionless, looking at the hunter, out it never tries to hide from 
him. It is one of the most conspicuous animals in Nature. Native 
hunters of the true hunting tribes pick it up invariably at an 
astonishing distance, and near by it never escapes their eyes; its 
coloration is of not the slightest use to it from the standpoint of 
concealment. Of course, white men, even though good ordinary 
hunters, and black men of the non-hunting tribes, often fail to see 
it, just as they often fail to see a man or a horse, at a distance; 
but this is almost always at such a distance that the coloration 
pattern cannot be made out at all, the animal seeming neutral 
tinted, like the rest of the landscape, and escaping observation 
because it is motionless, just as at the same distance a rhinoceros 
may escape observation. A motionless man, if dressed in neutral- 
tinted clothes, will in the same manner escape observation, even 
from wild beasts, at distances so short that no giraffe could possibly 
avoid being seen. I have often watched game come to watering- 
places, or graze toward me on a nearly bare plain ; on such occasions 
I might be unable to use cover, and then merely sat motionless on 
the grass or in a game trail. My neutral-tinted clothes, grey or 
yellow-brown, were all of one colour, without any counter-shading; 
but neither the antelope nor the zebra saw me, and they would 
frequently pass me, or come down to drink, but thirty or forty 
yards off, without ever knowing of my presence. My “ conceal¬ 
ment ” or “ protection ” was due to resting motionless and to 
wearing a neutral-tinted suit, although there was no counter¬ 
shading, and although the colour was uniform instead of being 
broken up with a pattern of various tints. 
The zebra offers another marked example of the complete break¬ 
down of the protective coloration theory. Mr. Thayer says: 
“ Among all the bolder obliterative patterns worn by mammals, 
that of the zebra probably bears away the palm for potency.” 
The zebra's coloration has proved especially attractive to many 
disciples of this school, even to some who are usually good ob¬ 
servers ; but as a matter of fact, the zebra's coloration is the 
reverse of protective, and it is really extraordinary how any fairly 
good observer of accurate mind can consider it so. One argument 
used by Mr. Thayer is really funny, when taken in connection with 
an argument frequently used by other disciples of the protective 
coloration theory as applied to zebras. Mr. Thayer shows by in¬ 
genious pictures that a wild ass is much less protectively coloured 
than a zebra. Some of his fellow-disciples triumphantly point out 
that at a little distance the zebra's stripes merge into one another, 
and that the animal then becomes protectively coloured because it 
looks exactly like a wild ass ! Of course, each author forgets that 
zebras and wild asses live under substantially the same conditions, 
and that this mere fact totally upsets the theory that each is 
