I do not think that a perfect head-dress has yet been invented by man. A light hunting-cap is very convenient among thick trees, but it cannot be used as a nightcap in the bivouac. As regards colours of the dress, infinite misunderstanding generally prevails, as may at once be perceived by the colour of the uniform in which our rifle corps are clothed. People have an idea that because shadows are dark, and because people who crouch in ambuscade are generally in shadows, that therefore their clothes should be dark also. They forget that the same shade which deepens the tint of the trees gives at the same time an extra depth to the colour of the man’s clothes. As a first approximation to obtaining the best-coloured dress for the purposes of concealment, one would say, let it be of the prevailing hue of the country it is to be used in; so that, if the clothes were dropped on the ground, they would be positively undistinguishable from it at a short distance, whatever blaze of light or depth of shadow fell on it. I am acquainted with no country in the world in which “rifle-green” would answer this requirement. But, going a step further, we find that in no case hardly is the colour of the land one uniform hue, but that a cloth of any one colour, even though it be of the prevailing tint, catches the eye from its mass. It is therefore better that the colour of the dress should not be the same throughout, but irregularly broken, and that too in a manner which does not contrast too strongly with the disposition of the scenery, as for instance, the stripes on a tiger’s hide being vertical are far less conspicuous among the upright stems and reeds than if nature had disposed them horizontally. A little experimentalizing will show another curious and very unexpected result, namely, that if the very brightest colours are used in spots or stripes, or in any other design, but in such proportion that their actual mixture would have produced the sober tint required, then, at rifle distances, unless the pattern be too large, all individuality of the colours will be found to have disappeared, and they will have merged into exactly the same tint that would have been produced had the same colours been mixed together in the same proportion on the pallet. It will also be found that a very large pattern may be used if the margins of the various bands or spots of colour be a little shaded off. In this way we can in a great degree account for the gaudy liveries with which the most skulking of animals are usually dressed. The cat tribe is almost universally decked out with spots or bars. Snakes and lizards are the most brilliant of animals; but all these, if viewed at a distance, or with an eye whose focus is adjusted, not exactly at the animal itself, but to an object more or less distant than it, become apparently of one hue, and lose all their gaudiness. No more conspicuous animal can well be conceived, according to common idea, than a zebra;