Page:Darwinism by Alfred Wallace 1889.djvu/214

192 both inconsistent with any other theory than that the white colour of arctic animals has been acquired for concealment, and to that theory both afford a strong support. Here we have a striking example of the exception proving the rule.

In the desert regions of the earth we find an even more general accordance of colour with surroundings. The lion, the camel, and all the desert antelopes have more or less the colour of the sand or rock among which they live. The Egyptian cat and the Pampas cat are sandy or earth coloured. The Australian kangaroos are of similar tints, and the original colour of the wild horse is supposed to have been sandy or clay coloured. Birds are equally well protected by assimilative hues; the larks, quails, goatsuckers, and grouse which abound in the North African and Asiatic deserts are all tinted or mottled so as closely to resemble the average colour of the soil in the districts they inhabit. Canon Tristram, who knows these regions and their natural history so well, says, in an often quoted passage: "In the desert, where neither trees, brushwood, nor even undulations of the surface afford the slightest protection to its foes, a modification of colour which shall be assimilated to that of the surrounding country is absolutely necessary. Hence, without exception, the upper plumage of every bird, whether lark, chat, sylvain, or sand-grouse, and also the fur of all the smaller mammals, and the skin of all the snakes and lizards, is of one uniform isabelline or sand colour."

Passing on to the tropical regions, it is among their evergreen forests alone that we find whole groups of birds whose ground colour is green. Parrots are very generally green, and in the East we have an extensive group of green fruit-eating pigeons; while the barbets, bee-eaters, turacos, leaf-thrushes (Phyllornis), white-eyes (Zosterops), and many other groups, have so much green in their plumage as to tend greatly to their concealment among the dense foliage. There can be no doubt that these colours have been acquired as a protection, when we see that in all the temperate regions, where the leaves are deciduous, the ground colour of the great majority of birds, especially on the upper surface, is a rusty brown of various shades, well corresponding with the bark, withered leaves, ferns, and bare thickets among which