DUIKERS AND SMALL ANTELOPES 567 
duiker or steinbok. The steinbok, no matter where it is, 
always seeks to hide, and always lies down when it spies 
danger, unless it thinks itself observed from near by. When 
forced to run, it races off for a few hundred yards, and lies 
down in another bit of cover. A Tommy lying down always 
feels at a disadvantage, and springs to its feet at the sus¬ 
picion of danger. A steinbok regards lying down as its natu¬ 
ral attitude at the approach of danger. Time and again 
we have seen a steinbok, when we were approaching from a 
distance, lie down beside or behind some bush or tuft of 
grass—it is astonishing how little cover will serve its needs 
—and watch us with head erect. If we approached too 
closely, or if it had been throughly alarmed and had already 
run once, it would lie with its head outstretched. 
It is a very curious fact that an antelope which trusts so 
much to cover and concealment and to escaping observation, 
and which does not live in thick cover, yet possesses a reveal¬ 
ing instead of a concealing coloration. The bright reddish 
of the steinbok’s coat harmonizes with no background in 
which we have seen the animal, and never in our experience 
tends to conceal it. Doubtless there are exceptional cases 
where the coloration does tend to conceal it—there is no 
conceivable type of coloration which might not once in sev¬ 
eral thousand times harmonize with its environment—but 
we never happened to come across such cases. If the little 
animal was where it could be seen at all, and where any color 
could reveal it, in our experience the bright reddish coat 
always tended to reveal it. Yet no antelope trusts more 
persistently to hiding, to escaping observation. We have 
seen one when pursued slip round a small bush and lie flat 
with head and neck outstretched; but its color was too con- 
