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cuar, x.] BRIGHT COLOURS OF SKULKING ANIMALS.   i67

tion to obtaining the best-coloured dress for the purposes of concealment, one would say, let it be of the prevailing hue of the country it is to be used in; so that, if the clothes were dropped on the ground, they would be positively undistinguishable from it at a short distance, whatever blaze of light or depth of shadow fell on it. I am acquainted with no country in the world in which "rifle-green" would answer this requirement. But, going a step further, we find that in no case hardly is the colour of the land one uniform hue, but that a cloth of any one colour, even though it be of the prevailing tint, catches the eye from its mass. It is therefore better that the colour of the dress should not be the same throughout, but irregularly broken, and that too in a manner which does not contrast too strongly with the disposition of the scenery, as for instance, the stripes on a tiger's hide being vertical are far less conspicuous among the upright stems and reeds than if nature had disposed them horizontally. A little experimentalizing will show another curious and very unexpected result, namely, that if the very brightest colours are used in spots or stripes, or in any other design, but in such proportion that their actual mixture would have produced the sober tint required, then, at rifle distances, unless the pattern be too large, all individuality of the colours will be found to have disappeared, and they will have merged into exactly the same tint that would have been produced had the same colours been mixed together in the same proportion on the pallet. It will also be found that a very large pattern may be used if the margins of the various bands or spots of colour be a little shaded off. In this way we can in a great degree account for the gaudy liveries with which the most skulking of animals are usually dressed. The cat tribe is almost universally decked out with spots or bars. Snakes and lizards are the most brilliant of animals; but all these, if viewed at a distance, or with an eye whose focus is adjusted, not exactly at the animal itself, but to an object more or less distant than- it, become apparently of one hue and lose all their gaudiness. No more conspicuous animal can well be conceived, according to common idea, than a zebra ; but on a bright starlight night the breathing of one may be heard close by you, and yet you will be positively unable to see the animal. If the black stripes were more numerous lie would be seen as a black mass ; if the white, as a white one; but their proportion is such as exactly to match the pale tint which arid ground possesses when seen by moonlight. I therefore protest against the usual notion that people have, as exemplified in the choice of a