12 EDWARD A. WILSON. 



more than one can say ; possibly it is a condition of things evolved in an exacting climate, 

 to allow each adult to obtain sufficient food through so long a period of incubation. 



Not only do the barren females take their turn with the hens that lay the eggs, 

 but the male birds also help, and so every individual, whether male or female, has the 

 same bare patch of skin in the median line of the lower part of the abdomen against 

 which the egg is closely held for warmth. What we actually saw again and again was 

 the wild dash made by a dozen adults, each weighing anything up to 90 lbs., to take 

 possession of any chicken that happened to find itself deserted on the ice. It can be 

 compared to nothing better than a football " scrimmage," in which the first bird to 

 seize the chicken is hustled and worried on all sides by the others while it rapidly tries 

 to push the infant in between its legs with the help of its pointed beak, shrugging 

 up the loose skin of the abdomen the while to cover it. Although the transfer of the 

 egg was never actually seen, there is every reason to believe that when the sitting bird 

 feels hungry it hands over its treasure to the nearest neighbour that will undertake the 

 duty of incubation. 



That no great care is taken to save the chick from injury is obvious from an 

 examination of the dead ones lying on the ice. All had rents and claw marks in the 

 skin, and we saw this not only in the dead but in the living. The chicks are fully 

 alive to the inconvenience of being fought for by so many clumsy nurses, and I have 

 seen them not only make the best use of their legs in avoiding so much attention, but 

 even crawl in under a ledge of ice where the old birds could not follow them, and there 

 remain to starve and freeze in preference to being nursed. Undoubtedly, I think that 

 of the 77 per cent, that die before they shed their down, quite half are killed by 

 kindness. Once caught and tucked away the chicken appears to be very comfortable, 

 but the process of changing hands, which must take place fairly often, is full of danger. 

 Often enough the chick is almost smothered by the struggles of the heavy birds above 

 it ; often enough, too, its skin is torn by beak and claw, and from time to time it will 

 be found to have dropped down a crack in the ice, where it remains to freeze in the 

 sludge while the birds dispute its possession just above, not one of them having the 

 sense to help it out of its dangerous position. It is not wonderful, therefore, that a 

 very large proportion come to grief, and the season of the yeai; in which the unhappy 

 chicken is forced to emerge from its egg-shell undoubtedly tends to increase the 

 enormous death-rate. 



A glance at the mean temperatures for each month of the year in this region {see 

 pp. 117 and 118) will show at once that the Emperor Penguin chick which is hatched 

 at the end of August has to face, in the first few weeks of its life, the lowest tempera- 

 tures of the whole Antarctic year. The mean of the two Septembers of 1902 and 1903 

 was — 1 2° F. and — 1 8 • 7° F. , and thermometers within a few miles of the rookery in 

 that month recorded — 63° F. and even — 68° F. upon the Barrier. 



The question that naturally arises from an infant mortality of 77 per cent, is whether 

 or no the breed of Emperor Penguins is dying out. From all that we saw and from all 



