THE EMPEROR PENGUIN. 15 



enter the water for their food. Probably during the whole winter there is never a day 

 on which a mile or two of travel on the ice would not bring them to an opening of 

 this kind. 



If, again, the set of the ice drift be easterly, there will be an open pool of water 

 under the lee of every cape along the ice cliffs ; and, vice versa, if the set be westerly, 

 there will be pools on the eastern side of all the bigger capes ; and one realises, on skin- 

 ning an Emperor Penguin, that the very substantial layer of fat beneath its skin, quite 

 indispensable in such a climate, can only be maintained by a constant and abundant 

 take of food at all times. The season of the year when this layer of fat is most ample 

 is, as one would expect, toward the end of the summer months and before the moult, 

 when the new feathers underneath the skin will be found embedded in a mass of fat 

 at least an inch in depth all over. This layer is much reduced by the growth of the 

 new feathers and by the period of starvation necessarily undergone during the moult, 

 when nothing will induce the birds to enter the water. 



The fish which forms the Emperor Penguin's staple diet is a small silvery species 

 of from 4 to 6 inches in length ; the crustaceans were mainly Euphausise and 

 schizopods, while the cephalopods were of considerable size, a foot or two in length 

 judging by their beaks. The pebbles were no doubt of use in the trituration of the fish 

 bones and the harder parts of the crustaceans' shells. They w^ere always present, in 

 the young and in the old, and were found even in the stomach of a chick which could 

 only have emerged from the egg a day or so before. Exactly where the pebbles come 

 from is not at first sight evident, seeing that the birds are never seen on land. 

 Probably they are picked up at tlie bottom of the shallow seas, or some of them may 

 be found on floating glacier-ice. Much grit and gravel, even of a considerable size, is 

 blown some distance on to sea-ice from the neighbouring coast-line. It may be 

 that this affords the birds the supply they need. Occasionally the stones are passed 

 with the excreta, and may be found in the radiating pattern which is left upon the ice 

 fioes where a company of Emperor Penguins has huddled together for warmth and rest 

 in their spring and autumn wanderings. 



These wanderings are worthy of a note in passing. We had settled into our 

 winter quarters on February 8th, 1902, and had seen no Emperor Penguins there at 

 all, until, on March 30th, we were surprised by a party of twenty-eight, whose 

 tracks over the ice showed that they had wandered very irregularly along re-frozen 

 cracks, endeavouring to find some place where they could enter the water. They 

 kept well together always, travelling in single file, now and again halting as 

 mentioned above to huddle together in a heap, all facing towards a common centre, 

 presumably for wairmth and sleep. Occasionally the tracks showed that a bird had 

 preferred to travel on its breast, but as a rule they all were walking. 



No bird was then seen till the 8th of April, when again a party of between 

 thirty and forty appeared in the darkness near the ship. Of these we caught and 

 killed a large number, and one was the heaviest so far recorded, scaling 90 lbs. The 



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