ng,
is of no consequence one way or the other as a survival factor. The
spotted patterns conferred no benefit as compared with the nearly or
quite monochrome blacks, reds, and dark grays. The bodily condition of
the various beasts was equally good, showing that their success in
life, that is, their ability to catch their prey, was unaffected by
their several color schemes. Except white, there is no color so
conspicuously advertising as black; yet the black jaguar had been a
fine, well-fed, powerful beast. The spotted patterns in the forests,
and perhaps even in the marshes which the jaguars so frequently
traversed, are probably a shade less conspicuous than the monochrome
red and gray, but the puma and jaguarundi are just as hard to see, and
evidently find it just as easy to catch prey, as the jaguar and
ocelot. The little fawn which we saw was spotted; the grown deer had
lost the spots; if the spots do really help to conceal the wearer, it
is evident that the deer has found the original concealing coloration
of so little value that it has actually been lost in the course of the
development of the species. When these big cats and the deer are
considered, together with the dogs, tapirs, peccaries, capybaras, and
big ant-eaters which live in the same environment, and when we also
consider the difference between the young and the adult deer and
tapirs (both of which when adult have substituted a complete or
partial monochrome for the ancestral spots and streaks), it is evident
that in the present life and in the ancestral development of the big
mammals of South America coloration is not and has not been a survival
factor; any pattern and any color may accompany the persistence and
development of the qualities and attributes which are survival
factors. Indeed, it seems hard to believe that in their ordinary
environments such color schemes as the bright red of the marsh-deer,
the black of the black jaguar, and the black with white stripes of the
great tamandua, are not positive detriments to the wearers. Yet such
is evidently not the case. Evidently the other factors in species-
survival are of such overwhelming importance that the coloration
becomes negligible from this standpoint, whether it be concealing or
revealing. The cats mould themselves to the ground as they crouch or
crawl. They take advantage of the tiniest scrap of cover. They move
with extraordinary stealth and patience. The other animals which try
to sneak off