ican Indians claimed that buffaloes
made their calves wallow in the red clay to prevent them from being seen
when they were lying down in the red soil.

The kinds of protection from these mimetic resemblances are many and
varied: the lion, because of his sandy-colouring, is able to conceal
himself by merely crouching down upon the desert sands; the striped
tiger hides among the tufts of grass and bamboos of the tropics, the
stripes of his body so blending with the vertical stems as to prevent
even the natives from seeing him in this position. The kudu, one of the
handsomest of the antelopes, is a remarkable animal in several ways. His
camouflage is so perfect that it gives him magnificent courage. With his
spiral horns, white face, and striped coat tinted in pale blue, he is
almost invisible when hiding in a thicket. The perfect harmony of his
horns with the twisted vines and branches, and the white colourings with
blue tints in the reflected sunlight conceal him entirely.

The snow-leopard, which inhabits Central Asia, is stony-grey, with large
annular spots to match the rocks among which he lives. This colouration
conceals him from the sheep, upon which he preys; while the spotted and
blotchy pattern of the so-called clouded tiger, and the
peculiarly-barred skin of the ocelot, imitate the rugged bark of trees,
upon which these animals live.

One of the most unusual and skilled mimics is the Indian sloth, whose
colour pattern and unique eclipsing effects seem almost incredible to
those unfamiliar with the real facts. His home is in the trees, and he
has a deep, orange-coloured spot on his back, which would make him very
conspicuous if seen out of his home surroundings. But he is very clever,
and clings to the moss-draped trees, where the effect of the
orange-coloured spot is exactly like the scar on the tree, while his
hair resembles the withered moss so strikingly that even naturalists are
deceived.

Henry Drummond must have known the animal world rather well when he
remarked that "Carlisle in his blackest visions of 'shams and humbugs'
among humanity never saw anything so finished in hypocrisy as the
naturalist now finds in every tropical forest. There are to be seen
creatures, not singly, but in tens of thousands, whose every appearance,
down to the minutest spot and wrinkle, is an affront to truth, whose
every attitude is a pose for a purpose, and whose whole life is a
sustained lie. Before these masterpieces o