e adaptive, but
have only recently obtained proof that it is so. An experienced
tiger-hunter, Major Walford, states in a letter, that the haunts of the
tiger are invariably full of the long grass, dry and pale yellow for at
least nine months of the year, which covers the ground wherever there is
water in the rainy season, and he adds: "I once, while following up a
wounded tiger, failed for at least a minute to see him under a tree in
grass at a distance of about twenty yards--jungle open--but the natives
saw him, and I eventually made him out well enough to shoot him, but
even then I could not see at what part of him I was aiming. There can be
no doubt whatever that the colour of both the tiger and the panther
renders them almost invisible, especially in a strong blaze of light,
when among grass, and one does not seem to notice stripes or spots till
they are dead." It is the black shadows of the vegetation that
assimilate with the black stripes of the tiger; and, in like manner,
the spotty shadows of leaves in the forest so harmonise with the spots
of ocelots, jaguars, tiger-cats, and spotted deer as to afford them a
very perfect concealment.

In some cases the concealment is effected by colours and markings which
are so striking and peculiar that no one who had not seen the creature
in its native haunts would imagine them to be protective. An example of
this is afforded by the banded fruit pigeon of Timor, whose pure white
head and neck, black wings and back, yellow belly, and deeply-curved
black band across the breast, render it a very handsome and conspicuous
bird. Yet this is what Mr. H.O. Forbes says of it: "On the trees the
white-headed fruit pigeon (Ptilopus cinctus) sate motionless during the
heat of the day in numbers, on well-exposed branches; but it was with
the utmost difficulty that I or my sharp-eyed native servant could ever
detect them, even in trees where we knew they were sitting."[66] The
trees referred to are species of Eucalyptus which abound in Timor. They
have whitish or yellowish bark and very open foliage, and it is the
intense sunlight casting black curved shadows of one branch upon
another, with the white and yellow bark and deep blue sky seen through
openings of the foliage, that produces the peculiar combination of
colours and shadows to which the colours and markings of this bird have
become so closely assimilated.

Even such brilliant and gorgeously coloured birds as the sun-birds of
Afr