Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/582

552 He had been watching us all the time, and would not have moved had we kept to the road. The wonderful part of this is, not that he resembled the round stones and dry grass, but that he knew he did, and was ready to profit by it." According to Livingstone's observations on a small Antelope named "Tianyáne":—"When the young one is too tender to run about without the dam, she puts one foot on the prominence about the seventh cervical vertebra, or withers; the instinct of the young enables it to understand that it is now required to kneel down, and to remain quite still till it hears the bleating of its dam, If you see an otherwise gregarious she-Antelope separated from the herd, and going along anywhere, you may be sure she has laid her little one to sleep in some cosy spot. The colour of the hair in the young is better adapted for assimilating it with the ground than that of the older animals, which do not need to be screened from the observation of birds of prey." "Rabbits open their nesting burrows and suckle their young by night, closing them lightly with earth again when they leave them. I had a nest under close observation last spring, and was much interested to find that its owner scattered some old hay from a Sheep fodderingstation close by, over the mould with which she filled the entrance to the burrow every time she left it, a procedure which materially lessened its chances of being discovered." We can find another example in the East. In the South Mahratta country, according to Sir W. Elliot, it is a common belief of the peasants that in the open plains, where there is no cover or concealment, the Indian Wolves (Canis pallipes) scrape a hole in the earth, in which one of the pack lies down and remains hidden while the others drive the herd of Antelopes over him. The usual colour of these animals is a greyish fulvous, generally with a brownish tinge, so that active or aggressive mimicry is thus obtained. A similar explanation may be applied to the fact described by Capt. Scannon respecting the Californian Sea-lion (Otaria gillespii). This animal, when in pursuit of a Gull, "dives deeply under water, and swims some distance from where