APPENDICES 
421 
each of them is destructive of any principle of colour- 
protection. 1 
To consider categorically the whole class of mammals is 
obviously impossible ; hence I will here confine my remarks 
to a single additional example, and brief at that, since Selous 
has already pointed out its absurdity. I refer to the series of 
show-cases in the British Museum at South Kensington, 
designed to illustrate this phantasy of colour-protection— 
white Arctic foxes and ermines in the act of stalking white 
grouse or white hares. Exquisitely executed as they are, 
these groups constitute, nevertheless, a monument to colossal 
ignorance in high places; conveying, in Selous’ words, “ an 
entirely false view of the struggle for life as carried on in the 
Arctic regions, for they convey the idea of carnivorous animals 
hunting their prey in a bright light and by eyesight alone.” 
The continuous darkness of an Arctic winter is forgotten or 
ignored, and the actual habits of the creatures in life distorted 
to suit the exigencies of a theory. I will only add two 
supplementary remarks of my own:—(i) That creatures in¬ 
habiting snowy regions (even temporarily, as grouse at home) 
do not normally spend their time upon the surface, but beneath 
it; and (2) that when actually exposed upon the surface, such 
creatures—even although white—are virtually as visible as they 
would be in any other colour. Whatever object, animate or 
inanimate, large or small, protrudes above an unbroken contour 
of snow at once catches the eye—be it, say, but the point of a 
jagged stone or the tips of a tuft of rushes, either enveloped in 
drifted snow. I recall a remark of a Scottish whaler in Spits¬ 
bergen seas. Speaking of polar bears, he described the ice-floes 
as “ black with them ”—black with white bears ! Though wrong 
in the letter, the picture is virtually correct and apposite. Prac¬ 
tical Peterhead can give points to scientific South Kensington. 2 
1 Grass, by the way, is not always sere ; nor does a burnt veld long 
remain black. It is turning green “while you wait.” But neither lechwi 
nor cob is ever green. 
2 When attending the unveiling of the Selous Memorial at the British 
Museum on June 10th, 1920, I observed that the labels on these show-cases 
had been altered from “colour-protection” to “adaptation to environ¬ 
ment.” This is presumably in deference to the criticisms of our great 
explorer-naturalist, and is correct so far as it goes. The initial false 
inference, nevertheless, remains unchanged. 
